LAST week, I temporarily shut down my X/Twitter account, such was the volume of the vitriol and bile directed towards me.

My crime, as far as these keyboard marionettes were concerned, was to complain about it taking more than five hours to reach Dublin Airport from Newry – a journey which normally takes 50 minutes thanks to the improvements on the M1.

Following a lot of gastro/colitis illness last year, I now curtail my holidays to short hops. It will be that way for the foreseeable future.

In planning our trip, we have always been uber-cautious. ‘Da Boss’ prefers to be early – even ridiculously early, enjoying people watching in the airport.

David Adams: I’m a former loyalist who supports a ‘New Ireland’, but why won’t anyone tell me what it will be like?

Tom Kelly: My missed flight and the fuel protests that risk missing the point

We heard very little about the fuel protests in northern media other than that they were to converge in Dublin for 11am on Tuesday past.

Now, before saying much more, we both actively support trade unionism. I was a strategic advisor to the Financial Services Union (FSU) for 15 years, and the better half has been in the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (NIPSA) for 45 years and stood on many a picket line.

So the right to protest is not and never has been in question in our household.

On the day in question, we planned to be at the airport by 9am for a 12.30pm flight. We had factored in the protest to delay us by an hour or two at most.

We eventually arrived at Lusk service station at around noon. (At the empty Applegreen, staff told us the protestors were to gather between 6-7am and depart for Dublin at 8am, but didn’t leave until well after 9am.)

My mobile notifications indicated flight boarding. Then closing. It took a further hour from the service station to Terminal 2 parking – some five hours after we left.

We could have had a meltdown, thinking of us ill-affording to lose not only the cost of the flights but our hotel too.

Calmly, we booked a flight to London (a busman’s holiday for me) and decided to make the best of a bad hand.

I’d be the first to acknowledge this energy crisis is much more acute for many of the poorest in the world, in Africa and elsewhere. Travel disruption is very much a first-world problem.

But for two still-working sexagenarians, mini-breaks are good for both mental and physical well-being.

Speaking amongst ourselves, we couldn’t understand why the protestors couldn’t have made their point equally well by leaving one lane of the motorway open, so as not to inconvenience travellers, tourists, those going to hospital appointments, and indeed the thousands of vehicles which were actually going to work.

Traffic would have still been disrupted and slow, but empathy would have flowed both ways between protesters and other road users.

We were fortunate there were just the two of us; we watched an older pensioner gasping after unsuccessfully dashing to a boarding flight (it had taken him six hours to get to the airport), whilst another lady struggled to console her clearly distressed children who had hoped to go to Disneyland.

They had to rebook. This was no doubt costly for her, as it was for us.

Protesting is about disruption, but also has to take into account the needs of others.

The fuel protest included many hauliers, farmers, and some other organisations.

Most of the drivers on the M1 were not supportive of the blockade – many getting angry and displaying that anger by giving a two-fingered salute, not the victory sign.

The Airport Express buses seemed to be taken unaware of the scale of the protest too, as we counted six on our journey.

Many (including this driver) went off at junctions to rejoin the motorway, only gaining a few yards but feeling saner.

The central demand for the protesters is for the Irish Government to reduce the fuel tax/take on diesel and petrol in response to the escalating prices of oil due to the Iran War.

Understandably, independent hauliers are particularly affected. Though, to be honest, many of the larger freight companies were on the road trying to deliver goods.

This is a difficult call for the Irish Government, as it’s another existential crisis not of its making. And it affects everyone.

The government was particularly generous during Covid and carried on with those subventions much longer than any European country.

It’s hard to wind down giveaways as it leads to a degree of entitlement from the recipients. Measures intended for emergency situations can often become untouchable.

Already, the government has pulled together one of the most benevolent subventions in Europe to deal with the energy crisis.

However, it will never be enough as long as the incumbent in the White House plays snakes and ladders with international markets.

It’s argued that Poland lowered its tax take on fuel as a response – but it has much lower wages than Ireland.

The unpredictability of the war in the Middle East exposes the dependency of a small island like Ireland.

Although a wealthy country by some measurements, any government of the day can’t afford to play roulette with their reserves and still maintain public services.

Ireland needs to revisit its own possibilities for generating and sourcing energy through more oil and gas exploration.

The blockades may end now after the Easter holidays. But blocking off fuel depots and refineries is counterproductive.

Now is a time for national unity, because we are all caught up in this together, government and citizens.

Some of the Twitterati thugs trolling me are plastic patriots who are bandwagoning on legitimate economic concerns but who have political disruption in mind, caring little about the country, farmers, or hauliers.

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