DUBLIN — The Irish government deployed the army Thursday to remove trucks and tractors currently blocking key ports used for importing fuel and critical chemicals into the country.
Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan announced the move following two days of round-the-clock blockades by hauliers and farmers angry over the surging price of motor fuel.
The grassroots and apparently leaderless protesters, who are coordinating their actions on social media platforms, say they’ll keep snarling key roads until the government agrees to increase existing emergency tax cuts on petrol and diesel made after the launch of U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
Prime Minister Micheál Martin said the government had been reluctant to deploy soldiers on to the streets and wanted to avoid confrontations with the protesters, but had no choice once they blocked access Wednesday to the key ports of Foynes and Whitegate.
Foynes in County Limerick is a deep-water port at the mouth of Ireland’s biggest river, the Shannon, and of critical importance for many industries. Whitegate in County Cork hosts the only oil refinery in Ireland and imports a third of the country’s supply.
Martin said retail fuel outlets were running low on diesel and petrol, while the country’s water utility, Uisce Éireann, was already warning it had lost its usual supply of imported water purification chemicals.
“This presents a material risk to the security of public water supply and the protection of public health,” Martin told RTÉ radio as a convoy of army vehicles headed toward Foynes. “That’s unacceptable. That can’t be allowed to continue.”
The protesters have been blocking major motorways and road intersections nationwide since Tuesday, starting with Dublin’s key central arterial of O’Connell Street. But Martin suggested that reopening motorways and Dublin would be lower priority than the ports.
“We’re a trading nation. We export 90 percent of what we produce. Why in the name of God would people blockade our ports?” he said.
Martin rejected the protesters’ demands for a meeting, saying they did not represent any industry body and were trying to blackmail the government. It would set a dangerous precedent, he said, particularly given that the government last month already cut tax on petrol and diesel by 15 cents and 20 cents per liter, respectively.
“The gun cannot be put to the head of government, any government, in this manner,” Martin said, noting how the protesters were refusing to reopen O’Connell Street unless they could gain access to his own Government Buildings office.
“Everybody will be doing that every week,” he forecast. “The way to get a meeting now [would be] just to walk up with a couple of lorries, block motorways, block city centers, and you’ve got to talk to us now.”
The center-right government’s refusal to meet the protesters, and its decision to deploy the army instead, drew scorn from opposition leaders across the political spectrum. The main opposition Sinn Féin party, which seeks steeper cuts on fuel taxes, wants parliament to be recalled from its current three-week Easter recess.
Crucially, the Irish Defence Forces have a mixed fleet of Swedish and Italian heavy-lift trucks that are designed to pick up and deliver heavy armored vehicles. These are expected to be used to hoist the protesters’ vehicles off the roads if they don’t voluntarily remove them.
O’Callaghan, the justice minister, said any truckers or farmers who do not comply with police orders “should not complain later about any damage caused to those vehicles during removal.”
But protesters blocking O’Connell Street said Thursday that their businesses would fail if the government doesn’t further reduce taxes on fuel, which still represent more than three-fifths of the retail price.
“Ireland has gone to the dogs with the government with the carbon tax and the diesel tax. It’s going to put a lot more people out of business, including my own,” one protester, Thomas Clarke, told The Irish Times. Clarke said his monthly diesel bill had jumped by 40 percent to €8,500. His parked truck on O’Connell Street bore an unusual cargo — a black coffin labeled “RIP Ireland.”
An opposition party composed of four right-wing rural lawmakers, Independent Ireland, has allied themselves with the protesters. They called Thursday for the government to open “immediate, meaningful engagement to resolve this situation before it escalates further.”
