Green Party the hottest date in town as government talks begin

Suddenly the Greens are the hottest date in town. Eamon Ryan’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the election. Everyone wants a piece of him.

On Monday he and his TDs met the Sinn Féin delegation, for "exploratory" talks, an engagement that will continue on Tuesday morning. Midweek, it'll be Fianna Fáil's turn, as Micheál Martin seeks to persuade Ryan to renew the Fianna Fáil-Green alliance that ended so disastrously for both parties in 2011. And later in the week, Ryan expects to meet Fine Gael and the Social Democrats for discussions. Must be nice to be in such demand.

Ryan has been around this block a few times and knows the game. But he also knows how much it has changed this time.

The Green Party’s 12 TDs – 12 votes for Taoiseach, remember – could provide a vital bridge to a majority for a putative Fine Gael-Fianna Fail combination which doesn’t have the numbers to govern on its own.

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But the Greens’ 12 votes are not just the key to a Dáil majority for Martin and Varadkar, if the two men decide that is the road they wish to bring their parties down (and most people in Leinster House assume they will). Green participation in such an administration – perhaps along with independents – would give it a more “changey” aspect, and therefore more political acceptability than a coalition made up solely of the two old civil war parties with a few gene pool independents to make up the numbers.

Significant price

Ryan, of course, can work this out for himself, and the Greens are likely to demand a very significant price in policy terms for their support and their participation in government – not least because they will have to secure a two-thirds majority at a special party conference to proceed.

On the other side of the political divide, Sinn Féin knows that any prospect of a left-led minority government – albeit more rhetorical than realistic – requires the Greens to be on board to be remotely credible. Sinn Féin’s approach to the Greens is twin track – to woo them with promises of policy concessions but also warn them about the consequences of joining a coalition with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

The rallies that Sinn Féin is holding are part of that – to generate momentum for a “government of change” – but also to make the Greens nervous. And if the party does join such a coalition, the rallies help promote the narrative that Sinn Féin has been denied the opportunity to form a government by the parties of the political “establishment” and their poodles.

Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty said that the rallies were an opportunity to report to party members on the progress of the efforts to form a government. If that is indeed so, that part of the meeting shouldn’t take too long – nobody has made much progress, one way or another.

In fact, the options for government have narrowed, rather than broadened, since the election. That’s progress of a kind, perhaps.