Stephen Collins: FF and FG are afraid of what a Green deal might do to them

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has shown great patience and political skill in the way he persuaded his party to enter coalition talks with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil but a series of formidable obstacles will have to be overcome if the three parties are to agree on the formation of a new government.

The core problem is that the kind of programme required to get the Greens on board is likely to provoke outright hostility from the ordinary members of Fianna Fáil and Fail Gael. Backbench TDs in both parties are warning that if they are seen to abandon their rural base at the behest of Dublin middle-class Greens they will be destroyed at the next election.

The first big obstacle will be finding a consensus on the nitty-gritty of the programme. There has been a great deal of focus on whether or not the 7 per cent annual reduction in greenhouse emissions being sought by the Greens is feasible.

The Green demand for a substantial shift in exchequer funding from roads to public transport is something that has the capacity to provoke widespread opposition

Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin have made positive noises about the desirability of achieving the target over the next decade in order to entice the Greens into talks.

Ryan to meet Varadkar and Martin to begin negotiation process

---

Why Northerners will take a big interest in all-Ireland Green Party

---

Is a 7% annual emissions cut possible? Yes, say NGOs

---

Key climate plan targets ‘not credible’, warned senior official

---

That was the easy part. Everybody can sign up for pious aspirations but the policies required to bring them to fruition are another matter entirely. There is deep apprehension in rural Ireland that the Greens are intent on implementing measures that will drive the farming community back to the "frugal comfort" of bygone years and destroy the food industry in the process.

Hard left

It is not only rural dwellers who will cast a critical eye on whatever agreement emerges. Increased carbon taxes are the only realistic way of curbing emissions and promoting clean energy but not everybody accepts that view.

Sinn Féin and the hard left have already rejected expert advice that higher carbon taxes are necessary and they can be expected to oppose them tooth and nail.

The Green demand for a substantial shift in exchequer funding from roads to public transport is something else that has the capacity to provoke widespread opposition.

Whatever is agreed between the three negotiating teams will have to be ratified by the party members of each, so it is going to take a very delicate balance to persuade the members of all of them that the compromises required to strike a deal are worth accepting.

Members of the two big parties, still reeling from the stunning rebuff they received in the general election, are fearful of what a Green deal might do to them

The struggle within the Green Party to agree on even entering formal talks is a clear sign of how difficult it is going to be for that party to accept anything that can be construed as a climbdown. The party’s 12 TDs only agreed to the talks by eight votes to four, so a powerful minority remains to be convinced that an acceptable deal can be done.

A lot of attention has focused on the fact that the deputy leader Catherine Martin is one of the dissenting minority but she has accepted the majority decision and promised to work to bring it to a successful conclusion.

There have been suggestions that Ryan and Martin are playing a “good cop, bad cop” routine to extract maximum concessions from the two bigger parties and get it ratified by the party membership.

It will certainly help to get the required two-thirds majority among the membership if the deputy leader, who has been so publicly sceptical about entering the talks, is to come out in favour of it at the end of the process.

The other side of the coin is that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will also have to put the deal to their members. Both parties are supposed to hold special conferences and while that will now be impossible because of Covid-19 they will have to find a mechanism to get approval for the outcome.

While senior figures in both parties who are likely to be in the cabinet may be prepared to make serious concessions to the Greens, the same may not be true of backbenchers, never mind party members who have no personal stake in the outcome.

Apprehension

Members of the two big parties, still reeling from the stunning rebuff they received in the general election, are fearful of what a Green deal might do to them. “Sinn Féin and the Independents will destroy us right across rural Ireland if we concede too much to the Greens,” remarked one Fine Gael TD and the feeling in Fianna Fáil is the same.

There is also a deep level of apprehension in all three parties about the political onslaught that awaits them if and when they manage to find agreement. Sinn Féin and the hard left have already signalled their strong opposition to any attempt to cut back on the emergency payments that were introduced to help the workforce cope with the lockdown.

That is just a foretaste of the political battle ahead between the parties who are serious about governing and those who thrive on strident opposition. One reassuring feature of the Greens, as far as their potential coalition partners are concerned, is that during their pervious time in government they held firm in truly difficult circumstances. Mind you they lost all their Dáil seats as a result and that is a sobering thought for the party as it contemplates government again.