UNITED LEFT TD Joan Collins was among a group of people who halted a Greyhound truck from collecting rubbish in Dublin on Monday.
Gardaí were called to the scene on the Crumlin Road when Collins, local UL councillor Paul Dunne and five other colleagues challenged agency workers who were operating the trucks in place of the Greyhound workers who have been picketing for nearly a month.
In a post on her Facebook page, the Dublin South Central TD said that they heard that three trucks were operating the in Drimnagh/Crumlin area:
We found one in Drimnagh and converged on it. We stood in front of it and stopped it. We asked them “did you pass a picket this morning? Do you know you are strike breaking?” We were met with shrugs and a ‘we know nothing’ routine. After about an hour the guards arrived and said you can protest but you can’t stop the truck.
Collins says that their protests stopped the trucks from collecting bins for about two hours before they leafleted houses in the area to inform them about the protest.
“The scabs were in no uncertain terms as to what people thought of them by the time they managed to get out of the estate,” Collins said.
The United Left members then found another truck operating in the area and Collins says they did not stop it but slowed down its work and gave “dog’s abuse” to those operating it.
The Greyhound Group has criticised the actions of Collins saying that her actions “amount to incitement of illegal acts and reflects badly on an elected member of Dáil Éireann”.
“Apart from the health and safety risks associated with people walking to the front of trucks, Joan Collins is preventing a service that her constituents have paid for and to which they are entitled. We have asked the Garda Siochana to intervene,” the group said in statement last night.
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