GILMORE CANVASS: THE GREENS are no longer the party he "used to have respect for", Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore said yesterday.
Speaking to reporters at the annual James Connolly commemoration in Arbour Hill Cemetery, he said the Greens appeared to be preparing an exit strategy in response to negative opinion poll results.
“This is part of a Green strategy to get out of the Government. It’s quite clear now that the Greens have become nervous about propping up Fianna Fáil in Government.
“What disappoints me about it, is that they didn’t become nervous when Fianna Fáil took the medical card off the pensioners, the books off the schoolchildren, the cancer vaccine off 12-year-old girls.
“They’ve only become nervous when the opinion polls have started to turn against them and when people have become angry at them at the doorsteps in this election.
“And I must say that that’s not the Green Party that I used to have respect for, but it does appear as though it is part of their strategy to get out of Government,” he said.
When it was pointed out that Green Party leader John Gormley and TD Mary White said they had no intention of leaving Government, Mr Gilmore commented:
“Well that sounds like that they want it each way and they can’t have it each way. They are now propping up a bad Fianna Fáil Government.”
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, who was canvassing in Dublin, said the Government was being “destabilised” by comments from senior members of the Green Party. “They would want to understand that they are either part of the Government or they are not.
“And on the Taoiseach’s behalf, if he thinks that Fianna Fáil are pursuing the right policies here, which have been described by the Green Party as being disastrous, then they are both deluding themselves.”
Asked for his reaction to the Green Party’s call for a renegotiation of the Programme for Government, Mr Kenny said: “The parties to Government had a serious opportunity in the budget to redirect the way the country should be moving in terms of jobs and job-creation and they failed absolutely on that. And that’s where the anger of the people is, right across the country. And they have convicted this Government, and they’re waiting for them.”
Asked if he would consider going into an alternative coalition including the Greens, he replied:
“No, I’ve already said that what we need is a new government with a new mandate to take the country in a new direction.”
He said the Government was “proceeding down the road with serious potential risk on Nama [National Asset Management Agency] which has been holed beneath the water by a senior public servant who said that they don’t have the facilities or capacity to deal with this”.
Asked if he thought the Greens were preparing to exit from Government, he replied: “I don’t speak for them obviously, but I feel that the Greens are now becoming aware of the extent of anger of people out there at the way that the Government have betrayed the confidence of the people after the 2007 election”.
He said the timing of the Greens’ request for renegotiation was “obviously a reflection of what they are getting on the doorsteps”.
He continued: “The chairman [Senator Dan Boyle] has pointed out that a number of policy decisions taken by the Government have been, in his words, ‘disastrous’. Now the Taoiseach seems to have a different view, that these are right policies.”
Asked to respond to the Taoiseach’s point that the two main Opposition parties were at odds over economic policy, eg in relation to the banks, Mr Kenny replied: “He was the chief negotiator with the Greens and that party now describe his Government as pursuing disastrous policies.”
