'Going green is essential' - Eamon Ryan wants to be nominated for Taoiseach

Eamon Ryan is hoping to be nominated as Taoiseach this Thursday, saying that such an action would be indicative of the country’s need to go Green.

Presenting his full parliamentary complement of 12 TDs at Leinster House this afternoon, the Green Party leader underlined the fact his party “is really keen to get working” on the process of forming a Government.

“It won’t be achieved if it’s just divisive politics and that leads us to talking to everyone,” he said.

The party’s bloc of 12 representatives has rendered it the most important negotiating group in coalition formation talks, given its support will almost certainly be necessary no matter what form the new administration takes.

“I’m hoping one of my colleagues will put my name forward,” Mr Ryan said with regard to a vote for Taoiseach.

Such a vote generally takes place after a Ceann Comhairle is elected in the new Dáil. It is improbable that anyone could be elected as things stand, but that does not mean that such a vote cannot take place.

“We think going green is essential to where this country is going to go and it’ll give us a chance to set out that this is the future, and let’s grab it,” he said.

We could have a Green Taoiseach on Friday.

Mr Ryan said that Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael’s decision to rule themselves out of Government “is his prerogative”.

He suggested that one red line his party would be sticking to in terms of negotiations is that Ireland must achieve a 7% reduction in its admissions over the course of the Dail term.

“What are we going to do, are we going to pay the fines for not doing what has to be done? Are we going to say we aren’t going to be green as a country? How can we do that? We said that right through the campaign - we are going to be ambitious on climate and biodiversity loss.”

With regard to the prospect of a broad coalition of the left he said “the reality is it takes three or four years to get anything done”. “If you look at the numbers it’s hard to see how you get a stable Government. How would such a Government survive more than three months? It’s hard to see.”

Asked how the Greens could reach a consensus with parties of the left like Sinn Féin and Solidarity-People Before Profit, who have made no secret of their opposition to carbon tax increases, Mr Ryan said “we’ve done it already, we brought over the leading Canadian experts showing exactly how the type of system we’re interested in does actually work, we’d ask them how can you disagree with this best analysis?”.

The Green Party will not be putting forward a candidate for Ceann Comhairle, Mr Ryan confirmed. He would not be drawn on who his party would be supporting for that post, saying they would wait and see what the list of candidates is confirmed to be first.

“Massive investment in public transport, massive investment in public housing and cost rental housing and retrofitting of housing, massive investment in forestry,” he replied when asking what change he believes his party can fund effectively.

“It’s all doable, but it’s huge. It’s for the better,” he said.

Deputy leader Catherine Martin said that the Green’s approach to negotiations is to try to get the other parties to “woman up”. “Sit down with each other, I’d love if we could stop another two weeks of just toying around with will you-won’t you,” she said.

My experience of 2016 was that a lot of weeks were wasted, and people were getting very frustrated with the political system.

“If it ever comes to negotiations then our members will decide because that’s how our party is set up,” she added.