Paul Hosford: Are the Greens chasing voters that are unlikely to come back? 

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan spoke about how he believed there was a co-ordinated effort to attack Greens in some quarters. Picture: Evan Treacy/PA Wire

While last Tuesday’s announcement that he would step down as Green Party leader was a shock to most, Eamon Ryan’s inner circle was not surprised.

According to many, Mr Ryan had made his intentions clear over the last few months, having decided he would step down regardless of the outcome of the local and European elections, where his party took just 23 seats on councils across the country.

Mr Ryan spoke about how he believed there was a co-ordinated effort to attack Greens in some quarters and that his big regret was that a narrative had been allowed take hold in rural Ireland that the party is against rural people, that its solutions are costing people, and it is not connected to the man and woman on the street.

“None of that do I believe to be true,” he insisted.

Mr Ryan identified a problem that many in the Greens now feel they have. 

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The party is, rightly or wrongly, perceived to be anti farmer and anti rural and this is borne out by its lack of success at council level over the last month. 

Of the 23 councillors the party returned, just four are in local authorities outside Cork, Dublin, and Limerick.

With two candidates having emerged to succeed Mr Ryan, that question of whether the Greens can appeal to rural Ireland will now become not just a talking point, but an existential reckoning for the party with just months to go to a general election.

Junior minister Pippa Hackett, in announcing her candidacy, was keen to lean in to the idea that the Greens must fight for rural votes.

Speaking on Newstalk’s The Hard Shoulder, Ms Hackett said she is not a “conventional Green” as she would be the first female leader and the first one to live outside of Dublin.

“I believe my different perspective and my different life experiences can make the Green Party relevant and relatable inside and outside of Dublin.”

She said she would focus on building relationships with farmers, ordinary people, rural communities, and the business community.

Pippa Hackett is among the frontrunners in the contest for leadership of the Green Party. File Picture: Conor Ó Mearáin/Collins

Her surrogates, who lined up on the national airwaves to back her, pushed the same line — that the Greens need to be, as Limerick TD Brian Leddin put it, less “Dublin-centric”.

That her opponent is Dublin-born and reared means that Ms Hackett and Roderic O’Gorman will, in the eyes of many, offer a clear choice about the future appeal of the Greens — the ultra-urban or the broader base.

Speaking to some in the party, it is clear there is no consensus on anything other than the fact that the message of green politics is no longer resonating with much of rural Ireland. 

Not many can agree on why or how best to fix it. 

But the question some Greens might ask themselves is: Do they have to?

Of its 12 TDs (counting Neasa Hourigan who currently is suspended from the party whip), eight are based in Dublin, with one each in Waterford, Limerick City, Kilkenny, and Wicklow.

So, on the party’s best-ever day in 2020 when it saw 12 TDs elected, it was an urban cohort that was returned. 

Indeed, the party came close to keeping Ciaran Cuffe’s European seat in Dublin and saw councillors not just win seats in the capital, but top the polls. 

The party has doggedly pursued its part of the programme for government and this has often put it at odds with rural TDs because the outworkings are deemed to impact farmers or rural dwellers most.

With just months to a general election, the Greens may be chasing voters who are never likely to come back. 

Could that be at the expense of those who’ve stuck around?