When Eamon Ryan proposed to lead the Green Party into government in 2020 following protracted negotiations during the first Covid lockdown, he was backed by 76 per cent of party members.
Following a heated and sometimes fraught campaign, a far greater proportion of Green members endorsed the party joining Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in government than members of those parties supported going in with the Greens.
That number gives an insight into the party’s membership. It belies the reductive “realos versus fundis” analysis of Green parties across Europe – the notion that there is a constant and equal tension between the pragmatists and the idealists.
This isn’t an actual divide within the Irish Greens, but what is true is that members, more often than not, are closer to the centre of the left-right spectrum than is often portrayed to be the case. Rolling the sleeves up and making progress on the environment is usually preferable to being a critical but powerless voice on the Opposition benches.
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The decision of the party to back Catherine Connolly’s presidential election campaign is the latest effort by the leadership to chart a different course. I understand that Roderic O’Gorman believes that the party needs to be competing with Labour, Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats for votes. I don’t disagree, but I believe that it needs to be competing for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil votes – and transfers – too, just as we did successfully in 2019 and 2020.
I think it is unwise to alienate such a large section of the electorate, just as it is unwise to alienate the membership of the party. Moreover, the Greens’ core purpose is to tackle the destruction of our natural environment, climate change and its catastrophic impacts, none of which are the preserve of either the political left or right, and the party really should concentrate on these.
The Green Party of today appears less concerned with the environment and more focused on broader social issues. All of these are laudable, but, in my view, the move is bringing the party to a place that is occupied by other parties and, in turn, making the Green Party less relevant.
I know that many members, including former colleagues of mine who were proud to serve as TDs, senators and councillors, have been dismayed at the recent direction of the party. That it would back a candidate of the far left in the presidential run was unthinkable only a few months ago.
As things stand, the Green Party is not one that I would join, and so it no longer makes sense to remain a member
Connolly has had a long political career as an Opposition TD and before that as a city councillor in Galway. She has used her platform to criticise whichever government is in place, but the role of president is not to oppose the Government. If anything, it is to serve the State above politics and to do what the Constitution requires.
How would Connolly, if elected president, deal with legislation she has long opposed? Once deemed constitutional, she would have little power but to sign such laws into effect. How will her supporters react when she must enact legislation they passionately reject? The role of president is not to be a bulwark against government, but to stand above the political fray.
I made my mind up that Connolly was not a suitable candidate as soon as she was proposed because I don’t believe that she will park her deeply held political positions at the gates of Áras an Uachtaráin. Whether it’s her criticisms of the European Union or the US, her repeated equivocation on the causes of the Ukraine war, the preservation of the triple lock, or any other cause she has passionately represented, she will have to be silent on them for the most part if she is elected president.
But, even setting aside her politics, surely the recent revelation that Connolly employed somebody convicted of very serious firearms offences and signed this person daily into Leinster House, before them being vetted by the gardaí, must be a disqualifier in itself? The employee, according to Éirígí, was a member of Éirígí when she was employed by Connolly in 2018.
The Éirígí website today still hosts a video portraying “a piece of street theatre” that involved a mock trial and execution of Queen Elizabeth in 2011 in which the former employee plays a prominent role. I can’t imagine any of this will do much to bolster North-South and East-West relations if Connolly is elected president. By extension it will hardly help the cause of Irish unity.
Add to all of this her visit to Assad’s Syria, her opposition to sanctions against his brutal regime, her nomination of Gemma O’Doherty in the 2018 election, her recent criticism of British prime minister Keir Starmer’s comments about Hamas. The list goes on, and none of it makes Connolly look suitable to be Ireland’s Head of State.
The Green Party’s decision to support the Connolly campaign only deepened my concerns about its current direction.
It had other options. It could have put forward its own candidate. Although the prospects of getting a nomination were slim, given the current numbers of councillors and Oireachtas members, the effort to do so could have inserted the environment into the debate.
Despite the interrelated climate and biodiversity crises only getting worse, they have received barely any mention by any candidate so far. Senator Malcolm Noonan has an exemplary record as “Minister for Nature” in the last Dáil and he would have ably championed these crucially important causes. Or the party could have sat this one out, and focused on the rebuilding process following the difficult elections in 2024.
As things stand, the Green Party is not one that I would join, and so it no longer makes sense to remain a member. While I have now resigned my membership I remain proud of what the Greens achieved in government and on councils across the country in recent years.
I hope that, in time, it will once again focus on the greatest challenge of all – safeguarding our environment and addressing climate change.
On Friday of next week, I will be voting for Heather Humphreys to be Ireland’s next president.
Brian Leddin served as a Green Party TD for Limerick City from 2020 to 2024
