Being in coalition is seen by many Greens as a means of implementing their policy programme
POLITICS TRANSFORMS parties as well as individuals. Where you end up is not always where you wanted to go, and what you become may be different from what you intended to be.
The Greens started as a quasi-religious movement with political overtones but have gradually changed into a professional political party with quasi-religious overtones.
Like him or loathe him, party leader John Gormley is a serious politician who had the corners knocked off him in the political bear-pit that is the Dublin South-East constituency.
The sheer hunger and ambition of the man was amply demonstrated by his memorable confrontation with Michael McDowell of the Progressive Democrats in the "Ranelagh Rumble" when the then PD leader sought to repeat the well-tried election stunt of climbing up a lamp post to proclaim his message.
It worked. Gormley held the seat against McDowell and now he sits at the Cabinet table with his neighbour and party colleague Eamon Ryan, setting out the Green agenda and fighting, along with other Ministers, to salvage something from the economic whirlwind that currently blows across the international landscape.
Green politics and environmental concerns in general are no longer the preserve of eccentrics, or people regarded as eccentrics.
They have become mainstream, and all serious politicians and their parties have taken them on board.
Folk with long memories will recall that whenever the Labour Party went into coalition, its membership seemed to decline and the ranks of the far left grew accordingly.
The Greens are different. Their ranks have actually swelled by some 30 per cent since last year, from an estimated 2,100 members to about 2,800, according to a senior party source.
Far from being regarded as a "sell-out" of their principles, participation in Government is seen by many Greens as a means of implementing elements of their policy programme and making a lasting impact.
It hasn't been plain sailing all the time. As Bertie Ahern sank deeper and deeper into a morass of tribunal problems, the Greens piously stuck to their mantra of "Let's withhold judgment until the tribunal report comes out".
It was beginning to wear very thin, and even their admirers were beginning to wonder whether they would cling to power at any price, when the Greens had one of those strokes of luck that all too rarely happen to politicians: Ahern stepped down.
The new regime under Brian Cowen is described as "very businesslike" with "less plámás".
Inevitably there is a fair bit of tension at the moment, with a hair-shirt budget looming on October 14th.
Every small coalition party needs a safety valve or two and that's the role played by Senator Dan Boyle and Dún Laoghaire Deputy Ciarán Cuffe - or sometimes just a party spokesman or woman - who play the dual role of sending up distress signals and reassuring the troops at one and the same time.
A good recent example was the kite flown by Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe on the reintroduction of college fees. Immediately, a Green Party spokesman popped up to say that "the reintroduction of fees is not in the programme for government and it is not Green Party policy".
But when asked to state his position yesterday on the margins of the party's "think-in" in Tralee, Co Kerry, Gormley was carefully non-committal.
Now the party is focused on next June's local and European elections, which meant that the likes of aspiring MEP for Dublin Deirdre de Burca and numerous actual and wannabe councillors were on parade with their leader as he faced the cameras during a walkabout in Tralee yesterday morning.
