Ex-Green labels Boyle a hypocrite

FORMER Green party councillor Chris O’Leary has labelled his ex-colleague Dan Boyle a “hypocrite” who is mimicking the views of former members of the Government party to save himself from European election disaster.

Over the weekend the Greens chairman and Ireland South MEP election candidate said there was a need to change the Programme for Government, and that Fianna Fáil should accept that policies of the past decade have contributed to the situation the country is now facing.

However, accusing the Cork-based senator of mirroring concerns voiced just months previously by councillors who left the party – a move Mr Boyle heavily criticised at the time – Independent Councillor Chris O Leary said his former colleague’s comments were hypocritical and only voiced because “the writing’s on the wall for the Greens.”

“I wasn’t happy to leave the Greens in January because you’re never happy to leave something after so many years, but I felt I had to at the time and Dan Boyle, among others, were critical of that.

“Now they’re using the same rhetoric to try and save themselves. Dan is being a hypocrite and it’s only because polls are putting him on 3%. The writing’s on the wall for the Greens,” claimed the Cork city south east ward candidate.

“After the general election I was actually one of the ones who thought we could make a difference.

“But they just took their portfolios, put their heads down and didn’t want to know,” he added.

Mr Boyle said he did not accept the criticism of his weekend comments or suggestions he had “backtracked” in recent days.

He rejected claims that his position was the same as that of Cllr O Leary when he left the party in January, adding that “I don’t agree with Chris’s version of events”.

Meanwhile, a new umbrella group of loosely connected Independent councillors representing environmental and left-wing policies is to be launched in Dublin today.

The group – which involves at least 20 councillors nationwide, such as the Cork-based Chris O Leary and Annette Spillane, Richard Boyd Barrett of the People Before Profit alliance, and the Galway-based Catherine Connolly – will set out its charter for election at Buswell’s Hotel at 11.30am.

Among the issues to be highlighted include the nationalisation of the banking system, a “fair” tax system involving a wealth tax and “the abolition of all loopholes”, unemployment and housing policies, and a “radical” programme to develop green energy schemes.

The group has said it will act as a viable alternative to the established political parties, which it claims are tied up in long-established policies “no better than each other”.