Green Party could buck expectations and gain seats at next election, says Eamon Ryan

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan believes his party could overturn the boom-bust cycle of Irish politics at the next election by actually increasing its number of seats.

Mr Ryan said if the party continues to deliver on its programme for government commitments there is no reason why it could not improve its performance electorally, as other Green parties have done in Europe.

In the Republic, the electoral pattern for small parties, with few exceptions, is that they lose seats after serving in government. Mr Ryan suggested that the Greens, who won 7 per cent of the vote in the 2020 election, should be at the 10 per cent mark. The Minister for Climate and Transport was speaking at a round-table Christmas interview with reporters.

“We should be one in 10,” he said. “I think if we go to the people in the next election and ask this question, ‘would you be prepared to cast this vote as one in 10 to say that we want to secure the future for our children?’ I think I’m confident we could do that.”

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Mr Ryan said the local and European elections in 2024 would be key for his party, in advance of the general election the following year.

“I don’t think there’ll be a general election before that unless something unforeseen happens. We’re very close to our European colleagues. The European Green Group Party is quite strong. If you look at our colleagues in Finland, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, all those countries, they are in government. And they’ve often been in multiple governments. They return from one election to the next in government. It’s not inevitable that Green parties go through that boom-bust cycle in my mind.”

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He said that Green parties in Austria, Belgium and Finland were all at 10 per cent.

“I say to myself, ‘I think Irish people are just as green as if they are in Austria or in Belgium or anywhere else’.”

He said that a few years before the 2020 general election, his party was attracting 2 per cent support nationally. He was confident then, he said, the party would get at least 5 per cent of the vote in the general election. It surpassed that.

“There’s nothing certain, you have to deserve it. You have to work hard and serve the people and then go to the election and go to the country. But our focus isn’t on that kind of boom-bust theory … The more we deliver those bus services, the more we deliver low-cost childcare, the more Catherine Martin [delivers on the arts]. I think people will say, ‘yes, I want more of that’.”

Delivering ‘at scale’

Mr Ryan argued that his party was delivering “at scale”. He said the real test of its policies would be to succeed in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent each year.

“That’s the metric I will be fixated on over the next two years … If we succeed in that, we’ll succeed politically,” he said.

He continued: “There needs to be a Green Party in government, to my mind, for climate, and the environment, to be taken seriously. As much as I respect other people or other parties. I don’t think anyone else has this perspective … We should be in government.”

On the subject of the Leinster House car park being changed into a wildflower meadow, he said there were strong reasons for that change to happen.

“There is an alternative. TDs do need to drive a lot, not all but most. A lot don’t do that now, they take the bus or get the train. But I don’t see it as a huge disadvantage parking on Molesworth Street versus parking outside the front door. Actually greening that front of Leinster House, I think most TDs would support that. We’ll put it to the Oireachtas commission and see what they say.”