People urged to buy only the fuel they need as protests continue in Ireland

People in Ireland have been urged to only buy the fuel they need, to ease supply issues caused by continuing fuel protests.

The National Emergency Coordination Group (NECG) also warned that the number of fuel stations without supply could rise to 500 on Friday amid road blockages and protests at fuel depots.

Gardai were involved in a stand-off with protesters at the oil refinery in Whitegate, Co Cork.

A meeting between Government ministers and representative bodies from the haulage and farming industries ended without a resolution, with the crunch talks – which went ahead without the participation of protesters – set to continue on Saturday.

Ministers committed to arriving at a “substantial” package of measures for affected sectors but Christopher Duffy, a spokesman for the protest in Dublin, said the action would continue until there was detail on a “serious reduction in our costs”.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Micheal Martin has warned Ireland is on the “precipice of turning oil away from the country” as protests stretched into a fourth day.

Hauliers and agricultural contractors began a series of protests on Tuesday, which have grown from slow-moving convoys on motorways and restricted access to Dublin’s busiest streets, to blockades of fuel depots that supply half the country.

Access has been restricted to Ireland’s oil refinery in Whitegate as well as fuel depots in areas such as Galway City and Foynes, Co Limerick.

It has raised concerns about panic-buying at forecourts, some of which have run out of fuel, as well as the impact on emergency services and deliveries of key supplies for animal welfare on farms.

Government leaders have said the protests are “wrong” and the fuel blockades were holding the country to “ransom”.

One minister of state, Niall Collins, said the Government was working on a package of measures to tackle inflation that would only be implemented “once the blockade of our ports ends”.

The Irish army remains on standby to help gardai remove blockades at critical infrastructure, which includes fuel depots.

The NECG, which brings together a number of Government departments and state agencies, met on Friday to discuss the crisis.

It said: “More than 100 fuel stations are currently out of supply, with the number potentially rising to 500 today.

“The NECG heard that there are approximately 1,500 fuel stations nationwide.

“The NECG also heard that there is growing concern from international shipping companies about the ability to offload stock at some Irish ports and are monitoring the ongoing impact of these delays on their operations.”

The NECG also said that fuel supplies for emergency response vehicles are “under increasing pressure”.

It said that fire services will cease non-essential activities and there is “serious concern about the impact that fuel supply shortages are having on the National Ambulance Service”.

It added: “In order to ease local fuel supply issues, the public is urged to only buy the fuel they need.

“The public is also warned that storing fuel at home or in unsafe locations presents significant safety risks.”

Mr Martin told RTE: “We are now on the precipice of turning oil away from the country in the middle of a global oil supply.”

He said “somebody else will buy” oil that is on a tanker off the coast of Galway if it cannot dock.

Asked if Ireland is at risk of “losing all its oil supply”, Mr Martin replied “correct”.

He added: “It is unconscionable, it’s illogical, it is difficult to comprehend.”

Transport Minister Darragh O’Brien said he was “extremely concerned” about fuel supplies not being dispersed across the country.

“I’m even more concerned when I get a message this morning from my colleague, Minister James Brown, about curtailment of fire and emergency services,” he told Newstalk on Friday.

“No-one can stand over that. We do not want to have to deal with this situation in a heavy-handed way and I don’t think that will happen. What we need to do is to de-escalate this now, today.”

Enterprise Minister Peter Burke said that the Government was working on a package of measures to combat inflation, which he said could be announced on Friday.

“I do believe we will have news on that, in terms of an intervention that will reduce inflation, that will try and reduce the price of groceries on the shelves for our consumers, for vulnerable people buying them,” he said.

Meanwhile, Government ministers are meeting with representative bodies of farmers and hauliers to discuss further support to deal with the high cost of fuel.

Protesters, including one of their spokesmen, John Dallon, were refused entry to the meeting at the Department of Agriculture.

Mr Dallon said protesters had been told by TDs that he would be permitted to attend the meeting but that he was turned away when he arrived.

He said “what we really wanted was to be able to step down the protest” and attend the meeting to “get results”, adding “we had demands”.

Asked if the protests would continue, Mr Dallon said: “They’ll continue until we get a result.”

Fine Gael TD Peter Roche said he was “frustrated” with the response from Government ministers after attempting to facilitate a meeting between protesters and ministers.

He said he believed, as a result of conversations he had with “senior people within the Government”, that protest spokespeople would be allowed to attend the meeting.

But he told RTE’s Drivetime that a minister attending the meeting told him it would be against “all the rules and guidelines of the Dail and the department” for the protesters to join the meeting.

Ger Hyland, president of the Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA), has offered to act as an “honest broker” between protesters and the Government.

He said he had been in contact with the protesters “through intermediaries” and was available to meet some of them before the meeting and take their concerns to the Government.

Elsewhere on Friday, it emerged in media reports that another spokesman for the Dublin protests, James Geoghegan, had convictions for animal cruelty as well as around 500,000 euro in Revenue judgments in recent years.

Addressing the developments on Newstalk radio, he said the animal cruelty and neglect convictions had a “simple explanation” relating to his name being on the herd number at a time when he was not “working at home much”.

Mr Geoghegan, who said he would consider running for election, said he did not currently owe money to Revenue and that a “lot of those figures were made up of estimates that were totally wrong”.