Greens unveil European election candidates and urge voters to opt for ‘a decade of change’

Sitting MEPs Ciarán Cuffe and Grace O’Sullivan and Senator Pauline O’Reilly will contest the European elections for the Green Party next June, the party has announced.

Minister of State Ossian Smyth will serve as the party’s director of European elections.

The candidates were unveiled at a press conference in Dublin on Sunday, following internal elections by Green Party members.

Mr Cuffe, MEP for Dublin, and Ms O’Sullivan, MEP for Ireland South, were elected to the European Parliament in May 2019.

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Ms O’Reilly, who has been chair of the Green Party since 2022, is a former family law solicitor and has been a senator since 2020. Originally from Co Galway, she was a local councillor on Galway City Council and is a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committees on Education and Climate Action.

Mr Cuffe said he was confident he could retain his seat but “not in any way complacent”.

The former Dún Laoghaire TD said voters could choose between climate action, tackling inequality and nature restoration or “they can lock us into a lost decade of wasted action and squandered opportunities”.

“The European Green Deal that Commissioner [Ursula] von der Leyen launched in 2019 is happening and it’s effective. However, in Europe, her party, the largest political party in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party, is stalling on climate action, on tackling pollution in our air and in our rivers and in delivering measures to tackle pollution in our cities and towns,” he said.

“So the Green Deal is under threat from the right and the far right. Therefore, the choices that voters make are crucial and as we watch cities being washed away, and unlivable temperatures, we must choose.

“Do we speed up action to tackle the climate crisis, to restore nature and protect consumers or do we stall? I believe we cannot hesitate, the 2020s must be a decade of change.”

Ms O’Sullivan said the margin was tight in the European elections four years ago and she had won her seat “by the skin of her teeth” but the Greens were now a party of Government and would show “what we have delivered”.

The former senator said there were “a lot of other parties who are looking to … steal our clothes”.

“I think the Green Party can show not only experience because we’re around a long time now, but also consistent integrity. The LNG [liquefied natural gas] decision demonstrates that it was the Greens, we kept pushing that policy,” she said.

Ms O’Reilly said she would be contesting for a seat in the Midlands Northwest region, which was an “incredibly diverse constituency” that had never had a Green Party MEP.

“I firmly believe that his seat is winnable by someone passionate, determined and hardworking, who understands and listens to the diverse electorate urban and rural, from eastern commuters to the wilds of Connemara in my own county, and right across the Midlands,” she said.

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“I am an experienced legislator. Nationally I played a critical role in the drafting of the Climate Act, as well as multiple pieces of legislation on women’s health, sexual assault crimes and education. At a European level I am an election observer and a member of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The European Parliament is where much of our equality and climate legislation is initiated and we need experienced Green politicians at the table now more than ever.”

Mr Smyth said the party’s priorities going into the European elections would be nature restoration, the migration crisis in Europe and the energy crisis.