Fuel protest to continue in Mayo after ‘insulting’ Government supports

Fuel protests are continuing to grow across Mayo, with organisers reporting thousands of people now involved in demonstrations across the region and plans emerging for a major national protest at the Dáil in mid to late April.

Gerry Tighe, who is something of an accidental organiser, found himself coordinating the Mayo protests after posting a single comment on a national protest group’s Facebook page asking whether anything was planned for the county. He was promptly asked to set up a WhatsApp group, and events moved quickly from there.

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The scale of organisation has since mushroomed. With so many protests running simultaneously, Tighe says he is receiving upwards of 50 to 60 messages per minute, draining his phone battery twice in a single day. What began as a group of around 200 people ahead of last Tuesday’s protest has since fractured and multiplied into a network of thousands. As the numbers grew, separate groups began to establish for Castlebar, Westport, Foxford, Ballina, Ballinrobe and Swinford, with each organising their own local demonstrations.

Protesters met with Minister of State Alan Dillon outside his office in Castlebar on Monday morning.

A breakaway group then took part in a moving protest of trucks, tractors and cabins through Westport on Monday afternoon.

Explosion in numbers
Tighe attributes much of the surge in numbers to the government’s response to the early protests. When footage circulated online of gardaí and armed forces confronting protesters ― including images of farmers being dragged from tractors and protesters being pepper-sprayed ― public anger intensified sharply. The Mayo WhatsApp group maxed out at 1,000 members within three hours of the footage spreading, and overflow groups were quickly established.

“At the minute, we have our Mayo grouping is maxed at one thousand members on WhatsApp, our second overflow group is at 650ish, our Castlebar group and Westport groups both have over 700 members and our Foxford group is at 400 and there’s still other independent groups setting up from that. There is a Ballina WhatsApp group has in the region of 700 members.”

The protesters’ core demands centre on the rising cost of fuel, with particular anger directed at the absence of any cuts to home heating oil. Tighe described the government’s announcement of relief measures as insulting, noting that kerosene prices had risen by between 85 and 100 per cent yet received no meaningful attention in the package. "People just simply can’t afford to heat their homes," he said, adding that many households are conserving what oil they have and waiting in hope that prices will eventually fall.

Tighe has repeatedly called on the government to engage directly with those on the ground rather than negotiating with farming and haulage representative bodies. He argued that the Irish Farmers’ Association and the Irish Road Haulage Association had actually discouraged their members from joining the protests, making any deal brokered with those organisations meaningless to the demonstrators. "If you don’t know what some group is looking for, how do you propose something?" he said. "Come to the table. Ask us what we’re looking for."

He described the supports announced by the government on Sunday as “ insulting to the people, insulting to the farmers, insulting to the hauliers.”

Smear campaign
When asked about the impact of the protests, with many forecourts in Mayo running dry, he told The Mayo News that “we’re not here to destroy everybody’s lives and shut everything down. We’re here to make a point that people of Ireland and the people of Mayo are pushed to our limits. For agriculture contractors and farmers, it’s no longer sustainable for them at the current fuel prices.”

“The government has tried to spin this and to blacklist protesters in every way they can. Instead of trying to engage with the protesters, they have engaged in a smear campaign.”

John Lynskey, Chair of the IFA in Mayo, acknowledged that the protests had helped motivate the government to act, though he said the concessions fell short, with nothing agreed on fertiliser costs. He rejected suggestions that the IFA does not represent the full range of people affected, noting that agricultural contractors ― who use significant volumes of diesel ― are represented within the organisation’s structures. He said the IFA had also attempted to bring protesters into the government talks.

Organisers say the protests will continue and “are spreading on an almost hourly basis to smaller towns and villages across Mayo”. Plans are already circulating for a national demonstration at the Dáil, with a target of 150,000 participants, though no firm date has been confirmed beyond a broad window of mid to late April.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme