A man is due before Midleton District Court on Thursday accused of driving a tractor erratically and being pursued by garda\u00ed with blue lights and sirens during the fuel protests in East Cork last weekend.<\/p>\n
The man, aged in his 20s, allegedly drove a tractor and slurry tank through a Garda checkpoint on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed pursued the vehicle before it stopped at a checkpoint near the Whitegate oil refinery.<\/p>\n
He was arrested and charged with serious road traffic offences.<\/p>\n
Crowds are expected outside Midleton courthouse on Thursday as calls circulate on social media for people to attend in support of the man.<\/p>\n
The Garda blockade near the Whitegate oil refinery where the man was arrested was a focal point of the fuel protests. It is understood the man was attempting to join the blockade.<\/p>\n
\u201cShortly after 2pm on Saturday, April 11, 2026, garda\u00ed observed a tractor and slurry tank combination approaching a cordon checkpoint on the approach to Whitegate, Co Cork,\u201d read a Garda statement.<\/p>\n
“The vehicle failed to stop at the checkpoint when directed by members of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na.”<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed then pursued the tractor combination, activating emergency blue lights and sirens indicating the vehicle to stop and warning other road users.<\/p>\n
“The tractor began driving erratically, swerving into the opposite direction in an effort to get away from garda\u00ed and endangering other road users.<\/p>\n
“The vehicle was stopped by uniform and plain-clothes garda\u00ed in marked and unmarked patrol cars,” the stated.<\/p>\n
“The driver, a male in his 20s, was arrested.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man is due before Midleton District Court on Thursday accused of driving a tractor erratically and being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[63615,61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-400440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-fuel-prices","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400440","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=400440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}