DUBLIN — Ireland’s government announced more than €500 million in tax cuts on motor fuel on Sunday in an attempt to placate protesters snarling key ports and roadways.

Prime Minister Micheál Martin announced the cuts hours after police successfully cleared protesters from the ports of Galway and Foynes in western Ireland as well as on Dublin’s central boulevard, O’Connell Street, which tractors and trucks had blocked since Tuesday. The clearances came a day after police backed by soldiers broke a similar blockade of the country’s only oil refinery at Whitegate in County Cork.

But Martin rejected suggestions that the package, worth an estimated €505 million, represented a reward for the wildcat protesters, who had rejected the diplomatic approach advocated by Ireland’s official trucking and farming organizations. Martin stressed he had negotiated Sunday’s benefits in cooperation with those officials — and would not speak directly to “unelected” protest leaders.

“It’s beyond comprehension that we were on the precipice of losing oil refining capacity in the country in the middle of an unprecedented global supply shortage of energy,” Martin said. “It makes absolutely no sense what was going on.”

But the premier conceded that the package might not end the protests, which have been organized largely on social media apps and platforms. Several scattered road blockades, largely targeting rural motorways, continued Sunday.

“We haven’t any guarantees of what protesters may or may not do,” Martin said.

The government’s advisory National Emergency Coordination Group warned Sunday that much of the economy and public services, including health care, would face heightened disruption this week even if the protesters end all road obstructions now.

Sunday’s package will be subject to the passage of emergency legislation Tuesday — the same day the main opposition Sinn Féin party will bring a motion of no confidence in the government over its handling of fuel taxes and the past week’s street standoffs.

The new government plans further excise tax cuts of 10 cents per liter on gasoline and diesel effective midnight Tuesday, Martin said at his press conference. Those reductions come on top of cuts introduced last month — before any street disorder — of 15 cents on gasoline and 20 cents on diesel.

Those initial cuts had been supposed to expire at the end of May, but like Sunday’s additional cuts will now run until the end of July — by which time, the government hopes, the current spike in oil prices over the Iran war will have eased.

The government also agreed to delay the next scheduled hike in carbon taxes, which are levied on fuel alongside excise charges. The planned May 1 hike now won’t happen until November, Martin said.

Foreign Minister Simon Harris, who spoke alongside Martin, said Ireland would seek, and expected to receive, European Commission approval for the temporary higher discount on diesel excise tax. Farmers and truckers have been particularly exposed to higher diesel costs, triggered by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and Tehran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial thoroughfare for oil.