The Green Party has “no regrets at all” about going into Government four years ago and will continue to fight to protect the environmental, social and artistic policies it introduced while in power, the Green Party leader has said.
The party, which held 12 seats in the last Government, suffered a heavy blow in Saturday’s election count with all but one of its TDs losing their seats.
Mr O’Gorman took the fifth seat in the five-seater Dublin West constituency, narrowly edging Aontú's Ellen Troy and Labour’s John Walsh.
Speaking at the Dublin West count centre on Sunday, Mr O’Gorman said the opportunity for a small party to get into Government and shape policy was “invaluable” and urged the Labour Party and Social Democrats to follow suit and use their mandates to “push progressive politics”.
“We’ve done the things we believe in, there’s been a cost but that’s politics,” said Mr O’Gorman. “We don’t run just to get the seat and hold the seat and not do anything with it. You get political capital and you spend it and we spent in the past four and half years.”
The Green Party leader admitted he was “very nervous” about the future of some of the “distinctly Green” policies introduced during their time in Leinster House, including “large” public transport commitments and the Basic Income for the Arts
“If we see the next government trying to roll back from some of those key Green Party policies, I’ll be using whatever platform I have to place focus on that and to fight it.”
The Green Party will now focus on “rebuild mode” and working towards the 2029 local elections with its 23 elected councillors, he said.
Both Ossian Smyth, outgoing minister of state at the Department of Public Expenditure and Joe O’Brien, outgoing minister of state at the Department of Rural and Community Development, lost their seats on Saturday.
Catherine Martin lost out in Dublin Rathdown, while her husband and party member Francis Noel Duffy, along with Green TDs Neasa Hourigan, Pippa Hackett, Marc Ó Cathasaigh, Patrick Costello and Brian Leddin, also failed to be re-elected. Steven Matthews and Malcolm Noonan also failed to hold their seats.
The Green Party leader acknowledged it had been a “very disappointing result” and said the party went into Government in 2020 “with our eyes open” and “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. 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; Eamon [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.”
Ms Martinsaid 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 weight 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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