Green Party meets in buoyant mood after election gains

Environmentalists will not exactly be fattening the tofu for the Greens’ national convention in Waterford this weekend, but the party can celebrate a return of sorts after a period in the wilderness.

The party was given a drubbing in the 2011 election for remaining in government with Fianna Fáil and imposing some of the most austere measures in the State’s history in the face of a vicious recession.

It went into 2011 with six TDs and emerged with zero. To compound its misery, the party failed to muster 2 per cent of the national vote. That meant it no longer had any State funding and essentially returned to being an organisation run by volunteers, and managed on a shoestring.

The portents had already been there in 2009 when the party lost all but three of its sixteen council seats.

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The term of the last Dáil were barren for the party. Eamon Ryan, its leader, managed to maintain a profile but it struggled to get itself heard. Its conventions were attended by diehards, its messages were mostly ignored. Meanwhile, climate change and environmental protection slid down the national agenda.

Still it was a little easier for the Greens than for Fianna Fáil (then) and for Labour (now). It was always sure of its identity and what it stood for. And those principles are particularly attractive to younger voters - even though the party’s conventions in the intervening years were modestly attended, the age profile was incredibly young, with idealistic fired-up youthful enthusiasm.

For them, the ins-and-outs of the blame game for what happened between 2007 and 2011 was immaterial.

The respectable haul of seats in the local election in 2014 suggested a modest return to the national stage. And that is what happened last year when the party won two Dáil seats (Catherine Martin’s performance in Dublin Rathdown surprised a lot of people) and managed to gain enough support to elect a Senator, highly-regarded Tramore woman Grace O’Sullivan.

The Greens are still micro, and it will take another election cycle before it can aspire to the high water marks of 2002 and 2007. And there is a question mark around whether it can really ever go beyond that reach.

Still, it has made its mark in this new Dáil and has managed to highlight its core message at a time the Government is honouring the Paris Agreement with words, and ignoring it by inaction.

The motions tabled at its conference this weekend reflect a growing confidence. There are calls for bans of pair trawling of fish in Irish waters; for waste to be paid at the point of purchase rather than at bin collection time (a little like the electrical recycle fee); to protect our native bee population; and to ensure that the hedge-cutting season is not banded.

Beside Ryan’s keynote speech on Saturday evening, there will also be discussions on Brexit and on the “fake news” phenomenon. It is certain that the Government’s record on making good on its Paris Agreement commitments will be challenged.

There are a few interesting motions. One is for a single European Parliament constituency for the entire country. Such a move would undoubtedly benefit small parties like the Greens. It would not be the Greens if there were not a few “alternative” sessions - the workshop on mindfulness hits the bull’s-eye as far as that is concerned.

The party will hardly be triumphant but it can take some satisfaction that it has recovered after being voted into near-extinction in 2011.