Speech isn't 'free' - for your voice to be heard you need the money to print newspapers or hire billboards, or the power to have your opinions reported. Tony O'Reilly and Bertie Ahern can drown out our voices at will.
We can work where we like, but in every job there is a boss making his profit from your work - the only alternative is to try living on £75 a week. We can travel where we like - as long as we have white skin or plenty of money - people are even sometimes stopped travelling to protests (see Nice article). And we can vote for one set of crooks or another, but we can't vote to throw them all out. Some freedom.
Socialism?
But what's the alternative? A 'socialist' state like the USSR, China, or Cuba? A Party running the state and ruling our workplaces, telling us to take pride in our poverty while they enjoy the trappings of power? Executions and psychiatric wards for political dissidents, and glorified slavery for the rest of us? Some alternative.
But there is a real alternative - anarchism. Anarchism means a society run from the bottom up, a society without rulers, a society where all are equal. A society based on the equal freedom of all people, without a boss in the workplace or a politician in the Dail telling us what to do but doing nothing useful themselves, a society where we decide ourselves how we are going to live and work together.
That's anarchism, the only alternative worth fighting for.