Conor McGregor was the centre of one of Old Moore’s of its predictions for 2026. It was that “Conor McGregor would be everywhere”. Right now, looking out at the state of Ireland, it’s hard to argue with that call.
While the country has spent the past fortnight gripped by fuel protests that have blocked refineries, clogged O’Connell Street with tractors and pushed the government to the brink of a no-confidence vote, one figure has consistently planted himself squarely in the middle of the biggest domestic crises Ireland has seen in years.
The Protests
The protests themselves were born of genuine hardship. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, following the conflict in the Middle East, sent fuel prices spiralling. But here is the part that many people filling up at the forecourt already know and rarely hear acknowledged plainly: a significant portion of what Irish drivers pay at the pump was never the oil company’s cut. It was the government’s. Fuel in Ireland carries a heavy tax burden, excise duty, carbon tax, VAT, and that burden sits on top of every price spike the global market delivers. When wholesale prices rise, the tax take rises with them. The government profits from the same crisis that is breaking ordinary people.
Farmers, truckers, taxi drivers, hauliers and small business owners found themselves staring down costs that threatened to make their livelihoods unviable overnight. When people began to move, slowly, in convoy, blocking depots and refineries, it wasn’t ideology that put them on the road. It was survival. The ask was not unreasonable: cut the tax. Give people room to breathe. The government’s initial response, a 250 million euro package that protesters felt didn’t go nearly far enough, did little to cool the anger.
Enter Conor McGregor
McGregor called for action, and stood in solidarity with the protesters. Whatever you think of the man, he showed up. And for a lot of ordinary Irish people watching their fuel bills and their margins spiral, that counted for something.
It is worth remembering that protest has always been woven into the Irish character. The tradition of standing up against forces that seem indifferent to ordinary welfare is not a radical impulse, it is practically a national inheritance. The fuel protesters are farmers who cannot afford to run their machinery, drivers who cannot afford to fill their tanks, and families watching the weekly shop become something that requires genuine calculation.
His involvement is not without complication, it rarely is with McGregor. He has always been a figure who attracts controversy as naturally as he attracts cameras. But stripping that back, what the protests revealed is something older and simpler: a widening gap between those who govern and those who are governed, and a hunger for someone, anyone, willing to speak plainly about it.
In this case, speaking plainly meant saying out loud what many had been thinking quietly, that when a family cannot afford to heat their home or fill the tank to get to work, a government sitting on a substantial fuel tax revenue stream has some questions to answer.
Protestors’ Cause
Whether McGregor’s involvement helps or hinders the protesters’ cause in the long run remains to be seen. The government has moved, announcing further tax cuts and a broader package of measures in response to the pressure on the streets. It is telling that it took tractors on O’Connell Street to produce what years of polite lobbying could not. The case for meaningful, lasting fuel tax relief, not emergency gestures, but structural change, has never been made more visible than it has been this April.
But the prediction stands. In the spring of 2026, when Ireland found itself at a crossroads, Conor McGregor was, as Old Moore’s foresaw, everywhere.
Photos are from Conor McGregor’s X Account. Follow it here.
