PSNI making plans to manage more fuel protests on April 24 'at various locations across Northern Ireland'

A PSNI statement added that ‘preparations for a policing response are underway to ensure public safety and to help minimise any potential disruption to the wider community’.

The news comes as a number of people have been given fines and others cautioned for public order offences after fuel protests caused traffic disruption across Northern Ireland yesterday.

Fuel costs have soared globally as a result of the US-Israel war with Iran.

The PSNI said it carried out a policing operation on Tuesday to deal with slow-moving vehicle demonstrations at the Sydenham Bypass, Westlink, M2, A1, A4, A5 and a blockade of the A6 at Toome.

Chief Supt Norman Haslett said the PSNI will be reviewing footage taken during the operation in order to consider further prosecution for any potential offences.

Up to 40 tractors and trucks were still taking part in a convoy moving between the Ballygawley roundabout and the A4 Enniskillen roundabout late last night (Tuesday).

Traffic was flowing through both roundabouts, just at a slow pace.

Farmers have said they are being hit on several fronts, with the price of fuel and fertiliser facing a hike.

Farmer Dermot O'Donnell, who was at the protest in Ballygawley, told the BBC that he wants fuel prices lowered and called for more people to come out and support them.

"Even the police are trying to get us away from a civil protest, it just goes to show you how much the country has flipped," he said.

"If we all stick together we might get something down, the price of diesel or something will come down which might help everybody."

Meanwhile, David Irwin of Redhouse Holsteins / Redhouse Genetic Solutions said he was just home from holiday with his family but

‘had been following the protest on social media’.

‘Everybody has just had enough and not just farmers,’ he said.

‘I have spent the last 10 days trying to find out who is behind all of this and I have not found out anything,’ he added. ‘I am normally one of the first to know about things, but not this’.

‘Whoever is behind the whole thing has managed to keep themselves completely anonymous,’ he added.

‘For farmers there is one thing after another, we are getting attacked with taxes, inheritance tax, milk prices and beef prices as fuel and fertiliser prices go through the roof’.