{"id":397384,"date":"2026-04-14T04:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T04:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/397384\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T04:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T04:56:07","slug":"on-the-streets-of-dublin-i-met-fuel-protesters-and-the-people-who-support-them-yet-our-leaders-still-dont-get-it-caelainn-hogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/397384\/","title":{"rendered":"On the streets of Dublin I met fuel protesters and the people who support them \u2013 yet our leaders still don\u2019t get it | Caelainn Hogan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Up in the driver\u2019s seat of a lime green CLAAS tractor, a young man called Dylan told me he was the second tractor to arrive on O\u2019Connell Street, Dublin\u2019s main street, for fuel protests<\/a> that would bring Ireland to a standstill for nearly a week. The tractor in front of him, belonging to his boss, had a sign warning \u201cNo Farms, No Food\u201d. The 19-year-old agricultural contract worker sat with two friends, young women of 16 and 17, out to support him. He had slept nights in the tractor in the biting April cold, along with many other farmers, fishers and truckers whose vehicles lined both sides of the street.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s profit before people,\u201d Dylan said of campaigners\u2019 complaints about the government\u2019s levying of 60% in duties and taxes on fuel continuing during a crisis. \u201cIt\u2019s affecting everyone \u2013 it\u2019s affecting our businesses, it\u2019s affecting yourselves if you\u2019re running a car or heating your house. Eventually if we don\u2019t get what we want, it\u2019s going to start affecting the price of food on the shelves and no one is going to be able to afford anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The illegal war on Iran, as the Irish president rightly decried it, shows no sign of ending soon. The resulting oil price shock is now laying bare Ireland\u2019s acute dependency on fossil fuels, on road transport and on a volatile global supply system \u2013 as well as successive governments\u2019 failure to plan ahead for a just transition to clean energy.<\/p>\n

For six days the fuel protesters blocked motorways and ports and blockaded Ireland\u2019s only oil refinery in County Cork, as well as fuel depots in Limerick and Galway. By Friday, petrol stations were starting to run dry. While government ministers vilified the protests as \u201cwrong\u201d and a threat to national security and critical supplies \u2013 the justice minister threatened to send the army in<\/a> \u2013 on the streets of the capital I saw little but solidarity and support. A Dublin woman turned up with a bag of sandwiches, telling the young people in the tractor to \u201ckeep going\u201d. A survey published on Sunday<\/a> showed 56% of people support the protesters.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell Street is named in honour of Daniel O\u2019Connell, a 19th-century nationalist known as the liberator, who convened \u201cmonster meetings\u201d of protesters demanding non-violent reform. Tractors flying tricolours parked outside buildings still marked with bullets from the 1916 Easter Rising<\/a> against British rule, a direct action that was initially unpopular for the disruption it caused. One lorry had a coffin painted with \u201cRIP Ireland\u201d and in the front window placards declaring \u201cEaster 2026\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet I listened to a caller on national radio who acknowledged that yes, people were struggling to heat their homes or feared for their futures \u2013 but couldn\u2019t they protest differently, take over one side of a road? Others were understandably concerned about vulnerable people prevented by the blockades from getting to hospital appointments or chemotherapy. But the protest only made an impact and international headlines because of direct action. The idea that grassroots protest has to be passive and led by \u201crecognised\u201d organisations \u2013 or even be always coherent in its goals \u2013 reveals a limited understanding of democracy.<\/p>\n

In the early hours of Sunday morning, faced with the arrival of mounted units and riot police<\/a>, the tractors and trucks agreed to move off O\u2019Connell Street peacefully. After days of refusing to talk to the fuel protesters, the government announced concessions worth \u20ac500m (on top of an earlier package worth \u20ac250m), with cuts to excise duty and potential delays to a carbon tax rise. Direct action achieved it.<\/p>\n

A no-confidence vote called for Tuesday is unlikely to dislodge the coalition of centre-right Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael parties, despite mounting criticism of their mishandling of the crisis. The young tractor driver I spoke to wasn\u2019t old enough to vote during the last general election. But neither he nor anyone I spoke to at the protest has any faith in political parties.<\/p>\n

It is hardly surprising, amid a vacuum of trust in political power and traditional representative groups, that grassroots protests \u2013 motivated by desperation at a 20% rise in fuel prices since last month) \u2013 were complicated by agitators on social media and the ecosystem of disinformation. Government policies have deepened inequality during years of unprecedented wealth generation in Ireland, laying the ground for a far-right fringe that scapegoats migrants and refugees for a housing and cost of living crisis created by a failure to ensure that people\u2019s basic needs are affordable.<\/p>\n

There were speakers at the fuel protest in Dublin known for promoting anti-immigrant conspiracies, as well as for misogynist, violent rhetoric, such as talking about Irish women needing to \u201cbreed\u201d more. It emerged that one of the protest spokespeople has convictions<\/a> for cruelty and neglect of farm animals.<\/p>\n

The Muslim Sisters of \u00c9ire, an organisation which has provided a soup run for homeless people on O\u2019Connell Street for years, described being told on Friday night, to \u201cgo home\u201d by individuals waving Irish flags and that the country was \u201conly for the Irish\u201d. The women stressed that they still supported the fuel protesters\u2019 objectives but noted that this was the most \u201cxenophobic rhetoric\u201d they had experienced in their years helping people.<\/p>\n

But to ignore the genuine concerns of so many workers afraid of losing everything because of agitators trying to profit off the momentum is to play into the hands of those who want to achieve power through division.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can we be far right?\u201d Dylan asked. For him the protest was \u201csolely about the price of fuel\u201d. But he witnessed attempts to co-opt it, with an anti-immigration demonstration making him and others \u201cfearing for ourselves, thinking this was going to make the guards [police] turn on everybody\u201d when it had \u201cnothing to do with us\u201d. Dehumanising and dismissing people like Dylan, which has been part of the response, is a losing game for everyone.<\/p>\n

Climate justice relies on more equality and a fair transition away from fossil fuels. In 2024 the electricity usage of data centres in Ireland overtook that of all urban homes combined<\/a>, green energy gains feeding big tech companies headquartered here for low corporation tax.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t sustainably change how we produce food and move goods, or our reliance on fossil fuels and imports, by pushing working people to the brink while serving corporate interests. While Ireland will lobby the EU to reduce or stall the carbon tax element of the burden, it should also join countries like Spain pushing for EU agreement to tax the oil and gas industries<\/a> that are making massive profits from the Iran crisis.<\/p>\n

Beyond the price of fuel, these protests raise urgent questions about over-reliance on increasingly fragile global markets. Ireland imports more than 80%<\/a> of its fruit and vegetables, while many of the farmers at the protests export the food they harvest.<\/p>\n

We have to change our fatal dependence on fossil fuels \u2013 but lasting change can\u2019t be enforced through suffering and inequality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Up in the driver\u2019s seat of a lime green CLAAS tractor, a young man called Dylan told me…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-397384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}