Editorials

The Irish Times view on Green Party leadership: A needless distraction

Hard to see where consideration of the national interest lies

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan TD with Catherine Martin TD. File photograph: Eric Luke/The Irish Times

Sat May 23 2020 - 01:00

The Green Party, say friends and foes alike, does politics differently. That is certainly true. It would be hard to envisage any other party that would respond to its most successful general election result and imminent entry to government with a leadership challenge.

But that is what we have witnessed this week. Following media reports that party members were urging the deputy leader to stand against Eamon Ryan once nominations for the leadership open – as they are constitutionally required to do – deputy leader Catherine Martin issued a statement in which she confirmed she would give the matter "serious consideration over the coming number of days".

She also insisted, however, that her focus remained on the government formation talks. It is hard to see how both those statements can be reconciled.

There was a time when the Green Party had no leader. Things have certainly come full circle.

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On the face of it, Martin’s signal would seem to undermine Ryan’s authority in his own party and damage the confidence in his putative coalition partners that he can deliver on his commitments to them.

Whatever else, the next government will require strong unity of purpose among the three leaders at its centre; in practice much of the direction and problem-solving of what would be a unique and uniquely challenging arrangement will spring from the co-operation and understanding between the three leaders and their offices. One of those leaders is now under a direct threat and the government is not even formed yet.

Though you often wouldn’t know it from the pace of negotiations, we are in the midst of an acute national crisis. Difficult and far-reaching decisions will be required by the next government in the early days of its tenure, decisions which will affect the lives of all those who live here. If the efforts to form a government fail, a political crisis will be added to the public health and economic crises the State currently faces.

It is hard to see where consideration of the national interest – as opposed to party, and personal, interests – lies in all this.

Paradoxically, it is possible that the challenge to Ryan may end up strengthening him, as once happened to Enda Kenny. The move against him has demonstrated no momentum in recent days; the great majority of his TDs have strongly backed him.

He still faces an uphill battle in obtaining a two-thirds majority for any coalition deal that is agreed, but like his fellow party leaders Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin, he can fairly answer his internal opponents with the question: have you got a better idea that can command a Dáil majority? So far, nobody has provided an answer to that one.

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