05/05/2026
The illegal war on Iran, as the Irish president rightly described it, shows no sign of ending soon. The resulting oil price shock is now laying bare Ireland’s acute dependency on fossil fuels, on road transport and on a volatile global supply system – as well as successive governments’ failure to plan ahead for a just transition to clean energy.
For six days, the fuel protesters blocked motorways and ports and blockaded Ireland’s 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 “wrong” and a threat to national security and critical supplies – the justice minister threatened to send the army in – 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 “keep going”. A survey published on Sunday showed 56% of people support the protesters.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, faced with the arrival of mounted units and riot police, the tractors and trucks agreed to move off O’Connell Street peacefully. After days of refusing to talk to the fuel protesters, the government announced concessions worth €500m (on top of an earlier package worth €250m), with cuts to excise duty and potential delays to a carbon tax rise. Direct action achieved it 💪 🇮🇪
https://www.theguardian.com/
