Tanya Rowlands

Melanie Joly just admitted if you don’t vote for the liberal party, you won’t be getting any money in your riding. How is this legal?

Saturday, April 11th. Day Five of the Irish fuel protest and despite everything this government has thrown at them, the farmers of Ireland have not moved. Five days against the full weight of the Irish state with the Garda Commissioner threatening force, army present, ministers competing with each other to use the word sabotage and the men sleeping in their cabs on O’Connell Street are still there this evening, still holding Foynes, still holding Galway, still holding every road and motorway the government needs them to clear before it’ll show them what’s in the package it’s been sitting on all week. Diesel went from €1.70 a litre to €2.30 in a matter of weeks because of a war Ireland never voted for and never consented to... a war whose energy consequences were entirely predictable and entirely ignored by a government that was too busy kneeling before Brussels to give a shit that home heating oil had gone up 67% on the same people it was elected to serve. And this is before you factor in that taxes already accounted for 60% of every litre of petrol at the Irish pump before the first missile was fired in the Gulf. The government had every lever available to ease that burden. Understand what €1.69 a litre already meant for an Irish farmer before any of this started, it wasn’t sustainable then. Taxes were already eating over 60% of every single litre at the pump. The same government that committed Irish money and Irish political capital to the Ukraine war, violating Ireland's neutrality that sent fuel spiking in 2022 and was described as the price of democracy by the same ministers now sneaking through back entrances to avoid their own people — had already spent years layering carbon taxes, green levies (at the altar of the WEFs green protection racket) onto every litre of diesel before a single shot was fired in the Middle East. So the farmers came out. The hauliers came out. The agricultural contractors who keep this island moving came out. They blockaded Whitegate refinery, that supplies 40% of the country’s fuel. They blockaded Foynes and Galway Port. They parked on O’Connell Street and slept in the rain because nobody with power in this country was listening, and sometimes the only way to make yourself heard is to make yourself impossible to ignore. This afternoon the state came for them at Whitegate with Public Order Units. Pepper spray deployed against Irish farmers. Men physically dragged from their own tractors by their own police force and removed from a road in Cork like they were a threat to national security rather than working people who cannot afford to run the businesses their families built over generations. Eight tankers were eventually escorted through under armed Garda convoy as if the men who grow this country’s food had somehow become the enemy. The Garda Commissioner has since announced he is moving on Foynes and Galway next. Said he will not tolerate this any longer. 600 of Ireland’s 1600 petrol stations are dry tonight and that number is growing. The government has a support package on a desk in Leinster House and won’t publish it until the blockades end. The farmers say they’ll stand down when they see what’s in it which is a reasonable position of people who have been promised things by this government before and watched those promises dissolve the moment the pressure was off. The British Empire controlled two thirds of the world at its height and it could not make Ireland bend to its will. They tried to break it with manufactured famine and they couldn’t do it. The blood that runs through the farmers standing is the same blood that looked the greatest empire in human history in the eye and didn’t flinch. Micheál Martin and his Brussels handlers would want to think very carefully about what they’re dealing with because this island has a very long memory, and a very poor record of submitting. You’ll never beat the Irish. Tiocfaidh ár lá.