He may have been referring to how he liked his vodka martinis prepared but surely James Bond’s famous quip regarding ‘shaken not stirred’ might well serve as an accurate sum-up of the politics surrounding Ireland’s fuel protests of April 2026.
There is little doubt but that the country’s ruling political class were indeed shaken, not just by the tractor go-slows and fuel blockades, but also by the fact that there appeared to be widespread popular support for those same protests. Most concerning for the government was the fact that this support appeared to be coming from those most affected by the same fuel blockades.
The abiding sense was that the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael coalition was behind the curve in their handling of the protests. Initially, various ministers were deployed on the mainstream media pushing a simple narrative which stressed the disruption and damage the protesters were causing.
The refusal to allow representatives of the protesters to attend meetings as part of representative groups again demonstrated the extent to which Official Ireland was holding its collective nose in its dealings with the type of people some would characterise as those who eat their dinner in the middle of the day. This is the same Official Ireland which has no problem in not only regularly meeting but payrolling entirely unrepresentative NGOs pushing their own self-serving agendas.
Even the eventual deal breaker of allowing a further €500m relief on petrol and diesel in addition to the original €250m package seemed to come with strings. Unusually, we had the spectacle of politicians and commentators musing out loud about how such a relief package might impact on things like health and social welfare spending.
Bizarrely, there were no such concerns voiced when the government agreed to an equivalent-sized €725m bailout of RTÉ. Few believe that will be the end of taxpayer-funding of the beleaguered Montrose media organisation although no one is likely to equate that to reduced spending on things like health and social welfare.
The fuel protests probably said as much about the failings of the country’s political opposition as it did about the disconnected and increasingly dysfunctional nature of the Martin/Harris coalition government.
Popular protests threatening to bring the country to a standstill should be grist to the mill for any political opposition. However, that hardly described the demeanour of a Sinn Féin led by Mary Lou McDonald which appeared to be primarily focused on checking which way the political wind was blowing.
The protesters may have had the support of the majority of Sinn Féin voters but it was clear that they weren’t the type of people that the McDonald leadership naturally identified with. It was much the same story with the other members of Ireland’s leftist opposition triumvirate – Labour’s Ivana Bacik and the Social Democrats Holly Cairns. Put simply, people from rural Ireland protesting about the price of petrol and diesel were not ‘their people’.
For that matter, neither were the protesters the kind of people that you would expect to be voting for Fianna Fáil these days. One of the more startling electoral statistics of modern Ireland centres around the virtual collapse in popular support for parties like Fianna Fáil.
Consider that as recently as 2007, Fianna Fáil won 41.6% of the popular vote. Twenty years later, the same party would be viewed as having a good election if it was to win even half of that support in a general election. The great achievement of the Martin leadership has been in convincing people that a party whose support base has basically halved is still a potent political force.
Those protestors from rural Ireland concerned about the costs of putting diesel into their tractors and cars are now part of that missing Fianna Fáil voter base. These days, they’re more likely to vote for an independent or Independent Ireland or simply not vote at all in the belief that ‘they’re all the same anyway’.
Not that the Fianna Fáil leadership appears overly concerned about the collapse of its support base or the loss of voters who would once have been solid Fianna Fáil voters. These days, the view of the leadership appears to be that clever post-election backroom deals with their former political rivals in Fine Gael can compensate for the loss of what was once a die-hard support base.
But, increasingly, that leadership narrative is starting to come unstuck. Fianna Fáil is now a top-down political organisation where the leader – not the membership – appears to decide policy. If you want evidence of that then look no further than the party’s annual Ard Fheis. Once a lively political gathering, this is now more a carefully choreographed PR event where delegates on expenses clap enthusiastically for whatever the leader is for.
Perhaps, it’s that vision of a political party that is now starting to run out of road. This was demonstrated by the statement by the party’s three youngest TDs who voiced concern at the direction of the party. That appears to involve a vision whereby the leader has absolute power and TDs function as little more than worker bees dutifully selling the party’s message for an all-powerful leader.
However, Fianna Fáil has been here before with backbench TDs grumbling about the overly centralized top-down leadership style of Micheál Martin. It remains to be seen if the party’s younger TDs can change the political culture of Fianna Fáil or if the party is going to continue as it has for the last twenty years.
Either way, the bad news for Fianna Fáil is that the party has lost a large chunk of its traditional support base. The reality now is that the people protesting about the price of petrol and diesel in Ireland in 2026 are highly unlikely to be voting for Fianna Fáil (or Fine Gael for that matter). The even worse news for Ireland’s main opposition is that neither are the same people likely to be voting Sinn Féin either.
April’s fuel protests were an indicator of fundamental dissatisfaction with the way Ireland is being governed. And if further evidence of that is required then look no further than the record 13% protest spoiled vote in last year’s Presidential election. That spoiled vote protest came on the heels of the emphatic rejection of the government’s controversial Family and Care Referendum in 2024.
Either way, those fuel protests look less like a conclusion and more like yet another manifestation of a stirring within Ireland’s body politic. That’s hardly good news for the leadership of Fianna Fáil and the party model it has championed in recent years.