“We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.” That was the reaction from one senior Green Party figure on Wednesday following the publication of the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael joint response to the Greens’ 17 demands submitted to the two parties last week.
The FF-FG response was cautious but concessionary – signalling agreement to most of the demands made by the Greens, but seeking engagement on how some, including the vitally important 7 per cent annual reduction in carbon emissions, could be achieved. It was constructed entirely with the agenda of bringing the Greens into the government tent.
Some in the Greens view it as something that can be built on and negotiated into an acceptable – indeed desirable – programme for government over the coming weeks. Others view it as a sort of honey trap, which would end in political disaster for the party.
And some in the Greens have a clear-eyed view of the fateful decision that the party must now make; the power accumulated by the party in its electoral success now demands the responsibility of decision.
Most Greens understand that if the next government adopts stringent carbon reduction measures – on top of paying for the coronavirus crisis and its legacies – it will have to do some quite unpopular things, for which their party will probably cop a disproportionate amount of blame. But that’s not what they are afraid of.
A squandered vote
Rather, they fear that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s sudden conversion to green ideals will continue only until such time as the government is formed, after which they would become bogged down by the inertia with which all Irish administrations wrestle, overwhelmed by the financial difficulties stemming from the pandemic, ultimately unable to achieve their policy goals, ending up frustrated, politically neutered and having squandered the biggest Green vote ever.
But they also know that pulling out of this process now would not be a cost-free option. That an exit stage left would make a general election more likely and that the Greens would have difficulty in explaining during that campaign why they decided to sit on the sidelines for five years, when (as they insist) there are only 10 years left to save the world. And that while the desire of most people in the party is for a left-led government, they might never get an offer as good as this again.
They will almost certainly never get any other potential partner to concede on so much of the outcome of a negotiation before it begins.
These are the arguments currently swirling around the Green Party and broader green circles. The influential former MEP and general election candidate Saoirse McHugh described the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael response in a tweet as “absolutely wocious” and “a joke”.
But a more considered and lengthy response from the Stop Climate Chaos coalition gave the document a cautious welcome and said it could “potentially provide the basis for a programme for government that would implement more ambitious climate policies”.
The party’s TDs will confer again on Friday. But a fierce debate is now under way not just in the parliamentary party, but in the wider Green movement.
