“History has completely repeated itself,” says former Green Party MEP Grace O’Sullivan solemnly as she reflects on the near annihilation of her party again in November’s general election.
In 2011, the Green Party was wiped out, losing all of its six Dáil seats, after going into government in 2007 with Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, with the latter party dissolving during that coalition’s term.
Last November, the party, after another period in a coalition, returned just one of its 12 deputies: leader Roderic O’Gorman, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.
“We, as a party, have to reflect on that and see what the learnings are,” says O’Sullivan. “If you asked me two years ago, would history repeat itself? I would have thought [through] the work of TDs and senators and policies the party had promoted, there would have been enough evidence to keep more than one person in the Oireachtas.”
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What the Green Party does next, and how the wider environmental movement in Ireland goes about pushing the “green agenda” forward, remains to be seen. But the party will face challenges with just one elected representative in Leinster House, though a senator could yet take a seat in the Upper House.
The path ahead appears even more ambiguous as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael look certain to be supported by a group of centre-right and rural TDs in the next government.
O’Sullivan and many others point first to environmental organisations and the opposition needing to hold that new government to account to ensure there is no backsliding when it comes to the landmark climate action legislation passed in the Oireachtas by an overwhelming majority just three years ago.
The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021 has committed to halving the State’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050 at the latest.
The Act has set up a legally binding system of carbon budgets – overarching limits to total Irish greenhouse gas emissions to be allowed over rolling five-year periods, across all areas and activities of society. Within each five-year budget, emissions are divvied up between various sectors with a system of ministerial accountability and a reporting cycle also established.
Oisín Coghlan, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, an environmental protection organisation, describes the legislation as being “hard-wired into the political system” and says they will be “reminding” the next government of its obligations.
He references the EU’s Nature Restoration Law, which requires member states to restore jointly at least 20 per cent of its land and sea areas by 2030. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, the independent budgetary watchdog, recently warned the State could face a cost of €20 billion if it fails to achieve reductions in carbon emissions in 2030.
“The Green Party were used as the mudguard to take the blame for any bits of climate policy that weren’t very popular,” says Coghlan.
“That served Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil well in the election, but now they’re going to be responsible for it themselves now. They signed up to the Paris Agreement [international treaty on climate change], they signed up to the climate law. They say it’s important.
“Now there’s no one else in government to blame other than themselves. They’re either going to have to take responsibility for leading the transformation themselves or take responsibility for failing to live up to the things they said.”
Prof John Sweeney, emeritus professor of geography at Maynooth University and a climate scientist, says if there is inaction in relation to the Climate Act, the road ahead could be legal action.
“I definitely see the route being not necessarily through civil action, demonstrations or lobbying, but through the legal route,” he says. “I see that as being most important.”
Dr Cara Augustenborg, assistant professor in landscape studies and environmental policy at UCD, believes there needs to be more emphasis on communicating the importance of climate action and that there are currently problems around “perception”.
“More and more, you hear people saying that climate actions are something that wealthier people do, that they’re not for lower economic groups, which isn’t true,” she says.
“Climate action is about warmer homes for everybody and it’s about sustainable transport for everybody. But that has not sunk in to the population. I don’t think that everybody feels that climate action includes everybody yet.”
Prof Barry McMullin, emeritus professor at the school of electronic engineering in DCU, says civil society groups need to help the public to understand the harsh realities of the climate situation.
He says the government was particularly ineffective around communicating environmental challenges and there should have been “a major public information campaign” and outreach education programmes.
“That sort of thing doesn’t cost billions,” he says. “It might cost a couple of million but it’s cheap compared to what we’re now getting used to thinking in – units of children hospitals . . .
“But €5 million or €10 million over the course of the previous government spent on a really strong public information campaign, that had town hall meetings in every parish, that would have moved the societal discussion on a lot more.
“There was a little bit of a missed opportunity there and I hope this government, at the very least, will find its way to doing that.”
Communication is an issue that members of the Green Party feel needs to be improved in order for it to rebuild including “reframing” its message to the public.
Green Party councillor Hazel Chu says the party has “a massive communication problem”. Chu, who is running in the upcoming Seanad elections, says it hasn’t been clear on its achievements to date and what it is “trying to do”.
“When you are trying to communicate a climate message, especially when it comes to how to bring people along, sometimes we don’t bring people along as well as possible,” she says.
Party leader Roderic O’Gorman remains optimistic. He acknowledges the general election wasn’t a good day for his party but adds that “it wasn’t a wipeout either”.
O’Gorman notes that The Irish Times/RTÉ/TG4/Trinity College Dublin exit poll by Ipsos B & A found that 51 per cent of respondents felt the government had not gone far enough in its actions to address climate change.
He says the party “pushed hard” on its messaging during the election campaign and that it has a “healthy membership” of between 3,700 and 4,000 people.
O’Gorman says while the party will “absolutely have to rebuild and grow”, the last time it exited government 13 years ago membership stood at around 800.
“We’re in a much different situation to that [in] which we found ourselves in 2011,” he says.
The party may be in a somewhat stronger position following this exit from government, but O’Gorman admits the landscape is also very different to 2019 and early 2020.
He says there was a particular focus on climate issues at the time, which benefited the Green Party, such as ‘Fridays for Future’ protests spearheaded by young people.
The Covid-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine, followed by a cost of living crisis “definitely had an impact” and drew attention away from climate “even though every day you look at the news and there’s a climate-related [issue] making headlines”, he says.
“The cost of living crisis and pressures it put on people allowed our political opponents to make an argument that it was environmental and climate measures that were adding substantially to people’s costs and that’s absolutely not the case.
“But it was a political argument that was put out there. If there’s probably one thing that I regret over the last 4½ years it is that, as a party and across the wider environmental movement, we should have been quicker and more vigorous in opposing and fighting back against that particular narrative because it’s not true.”
He said many of the steps taken by the party were about saving people money, whether it was on public transport costs or support for retrofitting for warmer homes.
“We worked hard to save the public money and achieve environmental goals. But I think we didn’t make that case loudly enough or early enough in our time in government,” he said.
Despite the party being electorally punished for going into government, O’Gorman is resolute that it would not deter them returning to a coalition in the future.
“We’re not about sitting in Opposition and talking about the need for change,” he says. “We’re about actual delivery. I was asked would I do it all again if I knew the outcome and the answer certainly from me, and from many members of the parliamentary party that I’ve spoken to, is yes we would do it all again.”
Ciarán Cuffe, former MEP and junior minister, says the party will need to reflect on the “dispiriting” election result, before regrouping. Cuffe, who was recently elected as co-chair of the European Green Party (EGP), says the party’s 23 local councillors will have to do “the heavy lifting for the next few years”.
He points out the difference between “a great day and a meltdown” for a small party is just a few percentage points, which is “tough”.
However, Cuffe adds that he and other members of the Green Party didn’t enter politics “for permanency or for an easy life”.
“You go into it because you care about the issues, you care about what matters to people and you do your damnedest to help them out and bring the country in the right direction,” he says.
“When the cards don’t turn up, you take a deep breath and struggle on.”
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