Chanting slogans against "Bush and Bertie" with equal vigour, a group of teenagers launched a new wing of the anti-war movement in Dublin yesterday.
School Students Against War, which claims to have up to 500 members from 40 Dublin schools, was inaugurated at a press conference close to the Dáil. "Fifty per cent of people in Iraq are our age or younger, and we have to speak up for them," said Gavin Keaveney, a transition year student at St Benildus, Kilmacud.
Roisin McCafferty (16) said her school - Dominican College, Griffith Avenue - held a debate on the war recently, and "my whole year was against it, which was surprising because loads of people would not normally be interested in these kinds of things. The issue has politicised a lot of students."
They are not enamoured with the Taoiseach given his controversial stance on the use of Shannon Airport for US military stop-overs.
"Fianna Fáil are traitors," said Róisín Ferguson (15), Greenhills. "What's the point in murdering people to set them free?" Fatima Ahmed, a student at Mucross Park, Donnybrook, added: "If the sanctions had been taken away the people of Iraq could have been able to rise up against Saddam." The war, she said, was "completely immoral".
Some members of the group have fallen foul of school authorities for organising anti-war walk-outs and protests during school hours. However, they say they won't be deterred.
The group, which is allied to the Irish Anti-War Movement, is staging a protest outside the Dáil at 7.30 p.m. today, and a further rally at the same location at 1.30 p.m. on Friday, April 11th, the day schools break for mid-term holidays.
Meanwhile, a group of independent TDs led by Mr Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party and Mr Tony Gergory is demanding that the Government prevent any of the extra 120,000 US military troops bound for Iraq from using Shannon Airport.
The two men, and five other TDs, have tabled a motion in the Dáil this morning calling for the permission to pass through Shannon to be revoked.
This comes despite the success last month of the Taoiseach's Dáil motion which allowed military aircraft to continue using the airport and Irish airspace, and the assurance from the Attorney General that these provisions "do not constitute participation in a war" under the Constitution.