Paul Hosford: Lampooned Greens must sell themselves to the public

Eamon Ryan has a knack for saying the wrong thing.

Eamon Ryan has an interesting knack for saying things that rile people up.

Be they rural TDs latching on to incomplete statements in order to portray the Green Party leader as aloof or out of touch with rural concerns — he insists there is no antipathy in that relationship in either direction — or people who voted for his party in 2020 and felt let down by the decision to go into government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

The interesting thing about a lot of what Mr Ryan says is that he is often criticised for saying things which are, well, correct. In March, he was mocked on social media for suggesting that people could drive slower to save petrol in the face of spiralling fuel costs.

“Everyone knows that the speed of cars affects efficiency and if you go above a certain speed, the cost increases dramatically,” he said.

The result was widespread criticism and Sinn Féin’s David Cullinane asking, “God almighty, how more out of touch can you get?”

But, as UCC’s Paul Deane told TheJournal.ie at the time, Mr Ryan is “spot on”. Mr Deane added that reducing speed on motorways from 120km/h to 100km/h could save 15% of the fuel used.

As with much of what Mr Ryan is criticised for, it isn’t just what is said, it is the context and how it is said. At a time of massive spikes in the cost of living, most people don’t want to hear about driving slower, regardless of how true the idea is.

It is through that lens that his comments in a pre-Christmas interview with reporters that there “needs” to be a Green Party in government in Ireland should be viewed. They will be pilloried and mocked by some, but there is a kernel of truth there.

There is absolutely no question that any government that is formed within the next decade or two must have a bloc within it that is focused, if not exclusively then largely, to the crises in climate and biodiversity 

Whether that has to be Mr Ryan’s Green Party is a question for the electorate, but his contention that Ireland has benefited from his party having real power in this government — holding 12 seats and three senior ministries in a three-way coalition — is not without evidence for the overall movement. While it is unlikely that a straight Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil coalition would have ignored the issue, it is also unlikely that it would have gone as far as it has on some issues like active travel, air quality, and retrofitting without the hand of the Greens.

To that end, Mr Ryan is not wrong about the need for a green voice in government, but does it have to be an upper case G? The Green Party has done an unenviable job over three decades, banging a drum about a cause that was seen as noble but misguided for a long time until, gradually and then suddenly, the world cottoned on — climate change is likely the defining issue of our time and is not going away without a major change to how we all live. Now that the issue is firmly on the agenda, does anyone else in the political arena want to pick up the baton and run with it?

The likes of People Before Profit call themselves Ecosocialist movements now, recognising that an overhaul of an economic system must come with climate justice, while the Social Democrats in Jennifer Whitmore and Holly Cairns have been admirable in their work on biodiversity and climate in this Dáil. The Labour Party, too, puts climate issues at the forefront often. But what many in the Greens will watch in the coming two years is how hard Sinn Féin works to steal its clothes. Some in the party would actively welcome it. They accept that a return with 12 seats may not happen next time around and want Sinn Féin to finish what the Green Party has started, as they see it.

Sinn Féin stance

But is Sinn Féin there yet? Can Mary Lou McDonald make her party stronger on both the environment and in rural Ireland in a bid to get close to a Dáil majority, likely to be 85 seats in 2025? In an interview with my colleague Ciara Phelan, Ms McDonald is still somewhat hard to pin down on her party’s agriculture emissions targets.

When put to her that Sinn Féin has never agreed on a target for the agriculture sector, she said she “absolutely accepted” the government’s target and now that it’s legally binding, that target needs to be met. However, the Sinn Féin leader would not say what target her own party would set for the industry.

“What we had asked for — and I think this was a very reasonable position — was when you’re making these targets, explain to us practically how you actually get to them because if the climate issue is to boil down to who can announce the most ambitious target, then I would suggest you are not actually getting very far,” she said.

Sinn Féin says, rightly, that it doesn’t have access to the data that the Government used to reach its conclusions, but many in the climate movement see this as a cop-out

They say that regardless of the data, it is possible to state to have a position.

Greens see it as an act of political calculus from Sinn Féin, trying to balance rural and environmental concerns in a bid to please as many people as possible, but Sinn Féin members point to Ms McDonald’s Ard Fheis speech in November, where she made a large point about Sinn Féin’s commitment to energy independence and renewable energy.

Mr Ryan is right, there has to be green voices at the highest level in government because the time for kicking the can down the road on climate has long passed. But his challenge will not be convincing Ireland of that. Irish people understand the urgency. Mr Ryan will have to convince the public that it is his green voices which should be in the next Cabinet.

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To do that, the Greens will likely have to develop sharper political elbows. Next week’s cuts to childcare costs will be the prime example of political success having many fathers and failure being an orphan. Roderic O’Gorman may find himself joined by any number of ministers to announce the measure, but will find himself alone when the Ukrainian refugee crisis pinches again.

The next two years will be an exercise is self-promotion for this vintage of the Green Party as it works to sell itself to the Irish people once more. That will likely mean that Mr Ryan says things which are easily lampooned, but also slightly true.

The greens, and the Greens, will hope that the focus is more on the truth of the statement.

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