Police removed and arrested protesters on Saturday to reopen Ireland's only oil refinery, as the country faced mounting fuel shortages and more than a third of its 1,500 service stations had already run dry. The move came on the fifth day of protests that had blocked fuel depots, a major port and key roads around Dublin.
At midday, police vans from the public order unit rolled into the Whitegate refinery in County Cork, where the military was standing by to help clear the site. Officers used pepper spray, and RTE video showed several officers dragging a protester from a tractor. Police Commissioner Justin Kelly said enforcement would be ramped up because the protesters were illegally blockading critical infrastructure and putting public safety at risk by threatening emergency response from paramedics and firefighters.
The crackdown followed days of disruption that had spread from fuel-price protests launched on Tuesday and quickly turned into blockades of trucks and tractors across the country. Vehicle congestion forced closures of part of the main highway around Dublin and sections of other major roadways, while talk of supply failures grew more urgent after Prime Minister Micheál Martin said on Friday that Ireland was on the brink of turning tankers away at ports during a global shortage and was in jeopardy of losing its oil supply. Reopening the Whitegate refinery would help restore some service, but for now the shortages are already hitting drivers and businesses.
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Government officials and a negotiator said there was progress in talks on Saturday, even as police were ordered to clear the refinery. That split captures the problem at the heart of the crisis: the grievances driving the protests were about soaring fuel prices and calls for caps or tax cuts, but the tactic itself had begun to choke off the supply the protesters said they were trying to defend. Kelly said the blockaders had been warned that enforcement was coming and had chosen to ignore it. Paddy Murray, speaking for the protesters, said they could not keep doing business with the cost of fuel and wages rising, and urged the government to help the working people who keep the country moving.
By Saturday night, the answer to is ireland out of fuel was less a simple yes than a warning: not yet, but close enough that police had to reopen the refinery to keep the country supplied. If talks fail to produce a deal quickly, the shortages that have already emptied more than a third of service stations could spread further still.
