Greens not getting the run-around

WHATEVER Deirdre de Búrca’s motives for resigning her Senate seat and Green party membership, I cannot share her view that Fianna Fáil is “running rings” around the Greens.

The Greens have managed to get a lot of their policies implemented, as an honest appraisal of their performance since entering coalition will attest.

John Gormley has succeeded in halting a series of potentially reckless planning decisions all over Ireland. The Greens have been responsible for our higher building and energy standards. Another plus for the Green presence in government is the ESB’s commitment to a “smart” metering programme.

As a campaigner against bloodsports, I have been following the Senate debate on the Dog Breeding Establishments Bill that aims to regulate so-called puppy farms. Hunt kennels and greyhound breeders will also have to register under the legislation and this has prompted shrieks of outrage from both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael members of the Oireachtas who insist the Greens are exercising an inordinate degree of influence over Fianna Fáil. A Fianna Fáil backbencher concerned about the inclusion of hunt kennels in the proposed clampdown on puppy farms warned last week that the Green party is the “tail wagging the dog”.

This view is echoed by many other members of the FF and FG parliamentary parties, and by strongly worded proclamations on pro-fieldsport websites alarmed by the Greens’ achievement in securing cabinet approval to ban stag hunting and fur farming.

That doesn’t sound to me like a party that is having rings run around it by its larger coalition partner. Or am I missing something? The Green party’s major failure, in my view, is an apparent unwillingness or inability to communicate to the public just how much it has achieved since entering government.

John Fitzgerald

Lr Coyne Street

Callan

Co Kilkenny