The Government has come in for criticism for refusing to meet the fuel protesters, including from within its own ranks.
Minister of State Michael Healy-Rae said on Thursday: “It costs absolutely nothing to sit down and talk to people.”
All the Opposition parties have urged the Government to sit down with the protesters. Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said the Government should not only meet the protesters but act on their demands.
The protesters – or some of them, at any rate – have said that if they get a meeting with the Government, they will abandon their protests.
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But the Government remained resolute on Thursday: no meetings.
There are three major reasons for its position.
The first is that the Government is not convinced that one meeting would be the end of it all. The protesters are a disparate group, with no central leadership or even agreed demands. A meeting with people from the blockade from the M50 doesn’t necessarily satisfy the people in Cork, or Limerick, or anywhere else.
A related point is that the Government is not going to concede to the demands of the protesters. Any meeting would likely only inform the protesters of that – which may be unlikely to persuade them to stand down the blockades.
The second reason is a broader one, and has got to do with the existing system of representative groups with which the Government has extensive and ongoing contacts.
This is a legacy of the old social partnership process, where trade unions, employers’ groups, civil society organisations, farming organisations and other stakeholders were regularly and as of right consulted by Government on not just issues related to their sectoral interests, but on the broader direction of policy.
That social partnership no longer operates in the form that it once did, but the stakeholder approach still exists. Government regularly disagrees with trade unions and other interest groups – but it maintains a regular dialogue with them. And that requires that it talks to the recognised bodies in each field – and not to ad hoc groups organised over social media over a weekend, that have no recognised structure or leadership.
It was noticeable that the hauliers’ body, the Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA), said on Thursday that it would not take part in protests while it was “negotiating in good faith with Government”.
Minister for Arts Patrick O’Donovan put it slightly differently on RTÉ: “Does every interest group then that has a problem with the Government in the future block O’Connell Street or block the M7 and then get negotiation rights with the Government? That’s not the way a democracy functions.”
The third reason is that there is in Government a deep distrust of the protesters and a suspicion that while their numbers include many sincere people who are clearly being fiercely squeezed by the current price increases, there are also malign political actors who are deeply hostile to the Government.
Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan suggested on Thursday that the protests were being “manipulated” by English far-right figure Tommy Robinson.
Whatever about that – and clearly those involved in the demonstrations can’t control who tweets in support of them – it has only increased the Government’s caution about dealing with the protesters.
