Why are fuel price protests sweeping the Republic of Ireland?

Fuel price protests across Ireland have been described as “arguably the most serious insurrection” since the southern Irish state was created in the 1920s. The increasing number of demonstrations has drawn comparisons with the Gilet Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement in France and the prolonged confrontation over the government’s proposed tax rise on diesel in 2018 and early 2019.

Since a week past Monday in Ireland, farm contractors and hauliers, who rely on petrol or diesel vehicles, have been staging “go-slow” convoys on roads and blockading infrastructure, including ports. Ireland’s only oil refinery near Whitegate in County Cork was also hit by protests at rising fuel costs. The organisers of the protests have not been clearly identified.

The Dublin government has sent in the army to remove protesters, and arrests have been made at several sites.

As with the Yellow Vests protests, carbon taxes and fuel duties are the focus for demonstrators. Unlike demonstrations in France, Ireland’s have not been sparked by domestic policy, but by the fallout from Washington’s latest military campaign in the Middle East.

While protests threatened to spread into Northern Ireland this week, demonstrations on the northern side of the border with the United Kingdom have so far been muted as trade unions and official farming groups have distanced themselves from any planned road blockades.

What kind of protests in Ireland?

The tenth day of protests began on Thursday.

Pictures of convoys of tractors and Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) convoys, some adorned with Irish tricolour flags, staging “go-slow” protests on motorways have dominated the headlines in Ireland for the past week. Demonstrators have been sleeping in their vehicles to continue the blockades. Coordinated actions have largely been vehicle blockades of major roads, fuel depots and ports across the Irish Republic. There have also been some smaller physical gatherings of protesters. While a number have dispersed in recent days, other demonstrators have resolved to continue their actions until their demands are met in full.

A blockade in central Dublin was removed on Sunday after hundreds of police officers were sent to clear the main O’Connell Street thoroughfare. Pepper spray was used, and some small scuffles reportedly broke out.

Another blockade was lifted on Sunday by protesters stationed outside a fuel terminal in County Limerick.

What is driving the protests?

Hauliers and farmers say they have been most affected by fuel price increases of around 28 percent for diesel and 25 percent for petrol in the Irish Republic since the US and Israel launched the first strikes on Iran on February 28, and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments transit the waterway during peacetime.

The blockage of the strait has triggered a major shortage of oil around the world. The narrow shipping channel remains closed after talks between the US and Iran in Islamabad on Sunday ended without a deal.

Around 40 percent of petrol stations across Ireland were reportedly empty at the weekend, several hundred left completely dry.

Some observers, such as the author and Irish Times commentator Fintan O’Toole writing this week, fear the blockades could lay the ground for a developing far-right movement in Ireland to grow.

Right-wing populist groups, which have sought to channel the grievances of agricultural and haulage workers elsewhere in Europe with varying degrees of success, have so far had less effect in Ireland. In Germany, for example, so-called extreme right-wing political parties, including Alternative for Germany, have aligned themselves with agrarian groups’ discontent and backed their successful efforts to overturn flagship environmental reforms by the European Union.

Spain’s insurgent Vox party has folded some of these concerns into a “patriotic trade union”.  It was set up in 2021, seeking to harvest rural votes from mainstream political rivals by leading a charge against what it calls “climate fanaticism”. France’s National Rally has sought to exploit more recent rural fears over the EU-South American Mercosur trade deal. Concerns over that deal prompted Irish farmers to take to the streets of Athlone town earlier this year.

However, despite riots in Ireland over immigration in late 2023 and 2024, the right-populist Aontú party only returned two members of parliament – Teachta Dála (TD) – in the most recent parliamentary election in 2024. A handful of independent TDs running on rural campaigns or anti-migration platforms were also voted in.

Nevertheless, these TDs hold the balance of power in Dublin. They could have potentially collapsed the Irish Republic’s sitting coalition government, had they all backed a no-confidence motion tabled earlier this week by the largest opposition party, Sinn Fein.

Other analysts say deep inequalities in Ireland’s agri-economy are what’s really underpinning protests.

“This is really highlighting some of the deep inequalities and contradictions of the agricultural system,” Patrick Bresnihan, a researcher at Maynooth University, Ireland, told Al Jazeera. “And, in particular, the grass-fed dairy and beef system, which is all about producing agricultural commodities for processing and export”.

Bresnihan said the government and media response to the protests has exposed a deep divide between rural and urban Ireland.

“There is so little understanding about the structure and composition and dynamics of the agricultural economy and agricultural system in Ireland,” he said, “which is kind of astonishing given it’s our biggest indigenous industry, it employs so many people, it is so essential to the political culture of the majority of the population”.

“Grievances are … are rooted in the fact there are a lot of workers who are being exploited within the system. So many farmers are struggling. Part of that comes from doing contractual work for hauliers and other farms which is seasonal, hourly, precarious”.

How has the Irish government responded to the protests?

On Thursday, April 9, three days after road protests began, the Irish army was ordered to remove protestors blockading fuel depots and other critical infrastructure. Ireland’s police force – An Garda Siochana – has also made arrests at various sites in joint operations, which “have required the deployment of a large number of Gardaí,” a spokesperson said.

The force did not provide an overall total of arrests when asked by Al Jazeera, citing an ongoing “live policing operation”.

Garda forces this week announced they would actively and forcibly stop obstructive drivers, detain them and tow their vehicles.

The centre-right coalition government in Dublin has announced a series of concessionary measures worth almost $600m for motorists and food production sectors, including farming and fishing. The measures include a 10 percent reduction for litres of diesel and petrol, as well as the postponement of a planned carbon tax.

Ireland’s Taoiseach and Tanaiste (Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister) have urged  demonstrators to end their protests and negotiate through representative groups.

Ireland’s coalition government has been grappling with other issues. On Tuesday, it survived a vote of confidence brought by Sinn Féin over the handling of the fuel protests. In a blow to the coalition, one of its junior ministers and Kerry TD, Michael Healy-Rea, resigned following yesterday’s vote, receiving cheers from protestors outside Leinster House in Dublin.

What has the public response been?

Public opinion appears split following the first week of demonstrations. One poll by the Sunday Independent newspaper said 56 percent backed the protesters in an initial show of solidarity.

However, there are signs that early public support is beginning to turn because of the disruption the demonstrations are causing.

The government’s health minister has reportedly said that planned surgical procedures will have to be cancelled next week as a result of the protests. Ireland’s elderly population has also been affected by travel disruptions, preventing carers from reaching them.

Reports of some Garda members being branded traitors by protesters may also be adding to a sense of public fatigue, indicating that protests may conclude this week.

Have protests spread to Northern Ireland?

A series of blockades were planned along eight main roads routes across Northern Ireland on Tuesday. Major disruption was expected, but none materialised.

Tractors briefly blocked traffic near Belfast City Airport on Tuesday but soon moved on.

Bigger protests planned later in the day at the Westlink motorway, which connects central Belfast to the city’s western districts and nearby commuter towns, also largely failed to materialise.

Some small-scale “go-slow” convoys were reported along several roads and junctions, prompting some diversions and the temporary closure of the Toomebridge passage, part of a major route between Belfast and Derry.

Police said no arrests were made, but some fines were reportedly issued.

A slow convoy of vehicles moved through the border town of Strabane on Saturday afternoon, before crossing back into Donegal and the Irish Republic. Just two tractors turned out for a demonstration in Enniskillen – Fermanagh’s county town – while a similar protest planned for Derry – Northern Ireland’s second city – was cancelled on Monday.

Dominic Bryan, a professor of anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, said there is still a small chance protests in Northern Ireland could snowball, should similar actions gather momentum in England and Scotland over the coming days.

However, he told Al Jazeera the more likely outcome is that planned demonstrations, which failed to identify “key chokepoints” and articulate clear demands on Tuesday, will fizzle out.

Bryan said there has been a shrinking appetite for such large-scale actions in Northern Ireland in recent years.

More recent high-profile protests – such as 2012 loyalist rioting over a council’s flag-flying vote and another over post-Brexit arrangements in 2021 – concerned constitutional or symbolic issues and mainly involved younger people, he pointed out.

Bryan noted that the majority of demonstrators this week were “small-c conservatives” and “not dyed-in-the-wool protesters,” adding that they lacked the same motivation levels as those south of the border. “There doesn’t seem to be the same constituency here, the same kinds of groups, as there are in the Republic of Ireland,” he said. “In terms of the current levels of protest, it doesn’t look that significant”.

There is also division within Northern Ireland’s devolved government over the protests. Sinn Fein, now the largest party in the power-sharing administration, appeared to blame government leaders in London for the crisis. First Minister Michelle O’Neill cited British involvement in Israel’s US-backed military campaigns as contributing to Middle East tensions, which have culminated in the Iran war. She vowed to “protect people here because of policy decisions that have been taken in London”.

Have protests spread across the border in Ireland before?

Anti-immigration riots during the summers of 2024 and 2025 are one of the few examples in recent times of protest movements spreading across the Irish border. Then there was some evidence of collaboration between groups in Dublin and loyalists in Belfast.

While some of the same social media accounts amplifying those 2025 protests were promoting this week’s actions, they failed to mobilise similar numbers, and organisers did not announce themselves publicly.

Of the relatively few demonstrators who turned out yesterday, those interviewed struck a somewhat reluctant note. Unlike their counterparts in the Irish Republic, they did not blockade important infrastructure and did not appear to continue into the night.

Ryan McElduff, a farmer from County Tyrone, told the Belfast Telegraph newspaper: “I just want to emphasise this is the last thing any of us want to do. You are seeing businesses taking time out of their day – they have bills to pay, they have mortgages to pay, and this is the last thing they want to be doing”.

Likewise, there appeared to be little appetite for demonstrations among trade union and farming sources Al Jazeera spoke to in advance of Tuesday.

They included unions such as Unite, which represent haulage workers and agricultural contractors, and Farmers For Action. William Taylor, from the campaign group, predicted that a number of the protests planned for Tuesday would prove to be “bogus,” given the low turnout elsewhere in Northern Ireland and that the source of the demonstrations appeared to be an AI-generated graphic.

For many, the actions proved to be something of an anticlimax after days of online hype and speculation.

Part of the reason may be that Northern Ireland’s devolved government has no power over tax policy, beyond setting rates for traders and households.

Other political parties, the Ulster Farmers’ Union and other industry groups, as well as medical unions pointed to disruption in the Irish Republic when urging their members and the wider public not to participate in road blockades.

Another variable is the added obstacles for organisers in Northern Ireland, where planned protests must be approved by the Parades Commission, the body set up in the late 1990s in part to remove police from decisions over whether a demonstration should go ahead or not.

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: aljazeera.com