What I Saw on O’Connell Street

Have you ever eaten a sausage off the ground?

On the news, and from the depths of my scrolling, I expected Ireland’s fuel protests to be full of chaos. Angry crowds. Disruption. The kind of carry that would make it understandable for the government to rupture.

But no, that wasn’t it. What I found was something else entirely.

There were trad musicians on the street. Fiddles, bodhráns, banjos. People gathered around them, singing as the rain came down. At the centre of it all, a group of older women danced, singing along to Grace by The Dubliners, nearly slipping on the wet pavement, tricolours hanging over their shoulders like they belonged there.

It didn’t feel like a protest in the way it had been described. It felt familiar. Like something I’d forgotten was still there.

But what genuinely surprised me was who was there.

Not just established farmers, but young men in their early twenties. People trying to build something from the ground up. Many had been there all week, sleeping in tractors, staying on O’Connell Street through the cold and rain, holding their ground.

These weren’t people looking for attention. They were people trying to hold onto something that’s slipping away. And most of the country has already decided what they are without ever standing in the street with them.

That’s not the picture being painted by our State owned media. 

At one point, we stood in the middle of the street around a barbecue. One of the farmers offered me a sausage. I said, G’wan, why not? It was the kind of thing you couldn’t say no to.

As they cooked, the barbecue tipped. Burning coal spilled onto the pavement, into the dirt of the street.

We laughed it off, and one of them said: “Ah sure, keep them going.”

And they did. They cooked them where they fell. And they still handed me one. So like any other sane man would, I ate it.

Over the course of the protests, local businesses came out in support. Food, tea, water, whatever they could spare. No big organisation, just people looking after each other.

Kids kicked a football around O’Connell Street Bridge. When the rain got heavy, they climbed onto the backs of trucks for shelter.

Support didn’t stop at the street. A fundraiser launched midway through, by content creator Michael McCarthy, raised over €150,000 in a matter of days. For a country our size, that doesn’t happen unless people feel something real.

What stayed with me most was how young so many of the farmers were.

These weren’t men at the end of their careers protecting what they had. They were at the beginning. Trying to make it work. Trying to build a life in an industry that’s never been easy, now made borderline impossible.

Because of fuel costs, some of them spoke like there wasn’t much point in continuing.

Growing up in Dublin, I always thought we had the worst of it. Rent, housing, that constant feeling that getting ahead was a pipe dream.

I didn’t think that same pressure was hitting people in completely different parts of the country in the exact same way.

The difference is, if we lose a generation of farmers, we don’t just lose jobs.

We lose something the country actually depends on.

None of what I saw lines up with how the protest has been described.

The word ‘far-right’ gets thrown around easily from a distance. Stories dug up about individuals, things from years ago, stretched to fit a narrative about thousands of people.

Standing there, it didn’t fit. Not the people, not the atmosphere or the conversations I had with complete strangers who I ended up feeling I’d known my whole life.

‘Far-right’ is less of a description and more like a way of avoiding what’s actually being said.

One senator, Eileen Flynn, said she was “terrified” of the Irish tricolour and wouldn’t go near any protest where it was flown. She claimed the movement had been taken over by the “far right.”

The following day, Senator Sharon Keogan pushed back. She said what most people were thinking: that it’s wrong to smear your own people like that, and ridiculous to fear your own flag.

Flynn walked out while she was speaking.

That said more than anything else.

If the portrayal felt off, the government response felt even further removed from reality.

There was no real engagement or attempt to meet the organisers. Not even a phone call.

Just distance. And eventually, force.

At one point, the army was brought in to help clear protesters. The same political class that had plenty to say about heavy-handed responses to protests abroad suddenly had no issue with it at home.

Watching people cook food on the street, share what little they had, and stay there all week didn’t feel like something that needed to be shut down. But something that needed to be listened to.

At least the reaction wasn’t just from the public.

Michael Healy-Rae stepped down from government, citing the demonisation of protesters. A rare move, and one that suggested even inside the system, something isn’t sitting right.

Lawmaker (TD) Ken O’Flynn followed with a speech describing the use of the army as “reminiscent of a Peronist state”, saying the government was concerned with nothing but itself.

He spoke with the same anger and frustration felt by ordinary citizens. And people heard it.

Then, as all of this was being said, Micheál Martin and Simon Harris, the leaders of Ireland’s government coalition parties, stood up and walked out.

At the exact moment their leadership was being questioned, they didn’t stay to hear it.

Most people in this country don’t have that option. When things go wrong, when the pressure builds, when you’re stuck dealing with decisions that make life harder, you don’t get to walk away. You deal with it. You live with it.

Because you have no choice. The people making those decisions do.

So this protest wasn’t just about fuel.

It was a reminder.

Ireland still depends on people like this. The farmers, the workers, the ones who actually keep things going.

But increasingly, it doesn’t seem to listen to them.

And if that gap keeps widening between the people who carry this country and the people who claim to run it, then what we risk losing isn’t just an industry.

It’s the sense that this country still belongs to the people holding it together.

Standing there in the rain, as Grace carried through the street, one line stayed with me:

“From our school days, they have told us we must yearn for liberty.”

It’s lingered with me since. As something that feels uncomfortably current.

A reminder of what’s being asked of people now, to stand their ground, to hold on, to keep going, even when no one in power seems interested in listening.