Green Party campaign launch: The Green Party will win a significant number of seats on local authorities in the June 11th elections, the party predicted yesterday.
"If future generations could talk to the voters today I bet they would say, 'For God's sake, please vote Green'," the leader of the Green Party, Mr Trevor Sargent said at the launch of the party's local and European Parliament elections campaign.
Besides contesting the European Parliament elections in three constituencies, the Greens are also running 160 candidates for city, county and town councils.
"We have a strong well-balanced team: 37 per cent of whom are women. I wish it was 50 per cent but we can take pride in the fact that it is higher than anybody else," he went on.
Emphasising the importance of the European Parliament, the Greens said MEPs play a key role in deciding legislation affecting every single EU citizen.
The party intends to lobby for a complete ban on the use of phosphates and phosphate detergents, along with action to curb car emissions that it blamed for "alarming rises" in asthma levels.
Curbs should be placed on slurry spreading, while farmers should be encouraged to use less chemical fertilisers and protect river water quality.
On energy needs, the Greens warned that the Irish economy will be harmed by $40-a-barrel oil prices because of Ireland's dependence on fossil fuels.
Farmers should be encouraged to sow plants useful in bio-energy "to turn farms into the sustainable oilfields of the 21st century" said Dublin South TD, Mr Éamon Ryan.
Renewable energies should provide 25 per cent of all Irish energy needs by 2020, while all new buildings should be forced to meet much tougher insulation standards. The EU has taken a lead on cutting carbon emissions under the Kyoto Treaty: "(But) scientists are now telling us we need to reduce our emissions by some 60-80 per cent.
"Ireland is committed to limiting its greenhouse gas emissions to 13 per cent above 1990 levels by 2012. Alarmingly, however, Ireland's levels are now over twice that target and are continuing to rise," said the Green manifesto.
Launching the Greens' local and European Parliament election campaign, the party's leader, Mr Sargent, discounted recent poor opinion poll showings.
"We saw similar results in polls taken before the last European elections and still went on to win two seats," he declared.
The launch was attended by sitting Dublin MEP, Ms Patricia McKenna, and Green deputy leader, Ms Mary White, who is running in the East constituency and by Cllr Chris O'Leary, who is contesting the South constituency.
Emphasising the need for well-qualified, hard-working MEPs, Ms McKenna said decisions now taken in Brussels "touch every city, town and village".
Mr Ryan said: "We Greens are business people. We are a party that believes in free trade, and fair trade. We are going to need enterprise to get us out of some of the problems we're in."
Questioned about the Greens' failure to urge supporters to limit their transfers to Fine Gael and the Labour, Mr Sargent: "We are trying to maximise our own vote."
Urging the electorate "to vote against the Government after you vote for us", Mr Sargent said the "tired, arrogant" Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat coalition should be retired.
Mr Ryan went further by criticising the performance of Fine Gael and the Labour Party on local authority councils since 1999.
Labour, he said, "had divvied up the baubles" with Fianna Fáil on Dublin City Council over the last five years, while Fine Gael co-operated with Fianna Fáil elsewhere.
