Mansergh defends Greens against 'abuse'

MINISTER OF State for Finance Martin Mansergh has claimed the Green Party has faced “racist” abuse and defended Fianna Fáil’s Coalition partners against attacks from within his own party.

Dr Mansergh said the Greens and their leader, Minister for the Environment John Gormley, were given an “exceptionally hard time” by some Fianna Fáil backbenchers, who were “from time to time giving out about the Greens and Gormley”.

Former Greens leader Trevor Sargent last night paid tribute to Dr Mansergh and thanked him for his comments. “That’s very magnanimous and honourable of him. That’s the nature of the man,” Mr Sargent said.

“He’s clearly an intelligent man and he understands that our priorities were as broad as the programme for government, in the sense that particular legislation was hijacked by people who were in many cases not even involved in stag hunting.”

The controversy surrounding the law to ban stag hunting with hounds, enacted in June, had prompted unfair criticism of the Greens, said Mr Mansergh. “Some of the abuse the Greens was getting was bordering on the racist,” he told Vincent Browne on TV3 on Wednesday night.

The Opposition parties and media outlets were also too critical of Mr Gormley, he added.

Asked for his reaction to Mr Gormley’s surprise announcement that the Greens wanted an election in the second half of January, Dr Mansergh said he would not “hold it against him over much”.

Dr Mansergh said Mr Gormley was perhaps “drawing conclusions from the reality that the Government probably only ... would have had a few months to run given the Dáil situation”. Dr Mansergh said he was “surprised” to hear Mr Gormley compare being in government to being in an asylum.