Financial Fool's Day

Many thanks for your support at our Financial Fools Day event outside the Bank of Ireland and AIB. We have collected a lot of complaint forms documenting people's views - on the banks and the global financial crisis - who came or stopped while passing by, which we will share with you in the coming days. We also have a film of the event which we will put on our websites next week. Several photo journalists and journalists came to the event.

After the protest, we went inside the banks to present our concerns to the bank managers. The Bank of Ireland bank manager defended the bank a bit, and the AIB manager said that he couldn't comment but would 'pass on' our issues to the CEO. We also presented a letter (see letter to the Bank Of Ireland below) to both banks calling for an audit of the banks to ensure that they are not implicated in facilitating tax dodging given the billions of euro that are lost from impoverished countries each year due to this practice.

It was an interesting experience inside both banks, as quite a large group came in so it became a bit like a public meeting inside the bank with customers stopping to listen. - And of course security guards and the gardaí shifting uncomfortably at the spectacle of a mass public complaint in the banks (I'm not sure whether our sporting of jester hats and helium balloons with fake money tied to them calmed them or increased their worry!).

We had an interesting experience in AIB highlighting our right to actually come into the bank to voice our opposition to the irresponsibility of the financial institutions. - Quite an unusual experience as its not often that politics and justice issues are discussed inside any bank.... People present inside the banks voiced a whole range of concerns from global tax justice, to the need for democratic control of financial institutions, to the need for salary caps, to inviting bank workers to join the protest.

Thanks all for your solidarity and to Eimear Gavin for playing to role of 'financial fool' for the day!

Nessa Ní Chasaide
On behalf of Bloom: movement for Global Justice

Read our Press Release from the Day here

Below are some of pictures of the event taken by I. Irigoien.