Green Party members entered Government four years ago with their “eyes open” regarding the risk they would be punished again for the decisions of larger parties, party leader Roderic O’Gorman has said.
The Green Party, which held 12 seats in the last Government, suffered a heavy blow in Saturday’s election count with several senior members losing their seats.
Ossian Smyth, outgoing minister of state at the Department of Public Expenditure, lost his seat in Dún Laoghaire, while Joe O’Brien, outgoing minister of state at the Department of Rural and Community Development, also lost his seat in Dublin Fingal.
Catherine Martin was sixth in the four-seat Dublin-Rathdown constituency following the first count, receiving 4,146 first preference votes. It was a significant fall from her 8,958 first preference votes in 2020, the highest number received that year.
Ms Martin’s husband and party member Francis Noel Duffy lost his seat in Dublin South West. Meanwhile, former Green Party TDs Steven Matthews, Neasa Hourigan, Malcolm Noonan, Marc Ó Cathasaigh, Patrick Costello and Brian Leddin were all struggling to retain their seats on Saturday night.
The Green Party leader acknowledged it had been a “very disappointing result” and said he expected the number of sitting TDs to drop to between one or two.
Mr O’Gorman’s own position remains uncertain – he remains in fifth place in the five-seater Dublin West constituency, closely followed by Labour’s John Walsh and Aontú's Ellen Troy.
However, there was a general consensus among members that “we’d do it all again, even knowing the bad results we’re receiving today”, the Green Party leader said.
“We went into Government with our eyes open in 2020 and we knowing there was a huge risk.
“There’s one clear difference between 2024 and 2011 and that’s the record of delivery that we achieved over four and a half years as a party,” Mr O’Gorman said on Saturday evening. “We’re proud of what we did. We were interested in making change, and we feel we’ve been able to do that.
“What I was able to do in terms of reducing childcare costs for parents all over the country and supporting extra parental leaves; Catherine [Martin’s] work in terms of expanding basic income for artists; Eamonn [Ryan’s] work in terms of transport infrastructure and reducing transport fees for everyone; the climate law that has legally binding targets, that’s now delivering us our lowest emissions levels in 30 years.
“I suppose enough people weren’t feeling in their pocket that the Greens were as focused at insulating people from the cost of living spikes that the other two parties were.”
Mr O’Gorman’s comments echoed those of Ms Martin, who said the Green Party’s performance was “the old story of the junior Coalition partner” receiving the “punishment of a Government”.
“Maybe it’s just the case of the smaller party getting edged out,” she said, adding that she was surprised at the scale of the Green Party’s fall in support.
“Even last night when I saw the exit poll, I still felt we might take the five or six seats,” she said, offering “commiserations” to party colleagues who look set to lose their seats. “We certainly punched above our wait and I was hopeful that we’d retain some of our seats,” she said.
“It’s a very, very disappointing day for the Green Party and my heart goes out to everyone, all of the candidates we ran. But this has happened before, and we will come back and we will come back stronger than ever before, that I can be sure of.” Ms Martin said she was proud of her work in Government, particularly in the arts and in online safety.
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