At the end of last month, 5,000 people marched through Dublin to protest against the imposition of a €100 (£80) household tax that the Irish government was already struggling to collect from voters sick of austerity measures imposed on a stagnating economy.

It was a small demonstration by the standards of some that have taken place across Europe in recent months – in places such as Syntagma Square in Athens, or in Spanish cities during the general strike that took place just before the Dublin protest – but numbers on the streets are not everything these days.