The Greens must dispel rural doubts or face wipeout by SF

When a party leader suggests reintroducing wolves to a small, populated island devoid of extensive wilderness, alarm bells should sound. It wasn’t a throwaway remark, when Eamon Ryan suggested this. He and his then-only fellow Green TD, Catherine Martin, suggested reintroducing wolves to Ireland as part of a Dáil Private Members Bill (on forestry) at the beginning of October 2019. It is acknowledged that the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone Park in 1995, was an astounding ecological success.

The human-arranged reappearance of the apex predator curbed large herbivores, which had become too numerous. Tree cover returned and there was an extraordinary transformation of this already extraordinary ecosystem.

Yet Yellowstone is a vast national park, on top of a volcanic plateau. It spans the wilderness of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho and many hundreds of miles from significant human habitation. Defending the proposal later, Ryan pointed to the reintroduction of wolves in mainland Europe. Again the vulpine homelands are in the vastness of the Alpine wilderness. Ireland has no wilderness, and frankly, the proposal is so silly that it’s not worth arguing against.

Then, only a couple of weeks later, in October 2019 Ryan suggested carpooling in rural Ireland while on Virgin TV.

He said: ‘It’s only a short walk down to pick it [car] up. You could cycle down to the local collection point.’

THE Donegal-born host, Ciara O’Doherty, spoke for us all when she rejoined: ‘On country roads at 8am in the morning, really?’ It was reported that Ryan expressed regret for this proposal.

He didn’t, he regretted the reaction, saying petulantly: ‘I regret completely in terms of, because it’s taken off like a mad thing, maybe I should shut up and never say anything’.

If Micheál Martin or Leo Varadkar were, in late 2019, contemplating coalition with Ryan’s Greens they were surely saying to themselves, ‘yes, shut up’.

Ryan’s wolf doctrine displayed a manifest disregard for the farming community and rural Ireland in general. A proposal for carpooling for rural Ireland displayed either a complete lack of knowledge of the realities of living in regions navigated by dark, wet, windy roads unsuitable for pedestrians, or a contempt for people living there.

Those who know the rural west well will feel Ryan’s well-reported sunny excursions there do not afford him an understanding of the winter realities.

Whereas Ryan’s eccentricities may have been humorously endearing when he was head of a two-seat opposition party, they are a serious business now.

In 2020, the Greens won 12 seats, multiplying their Dáil presence sixfold. We forget the current Coalition was, in fact, a desperate last resort to form a government after Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had lost seats in Election 2020.

The Greens had a lot of seats, seats required to put Martin and Varadkar in jobs

Sadly, however, those injudicious flights of fancy in opposition have been made Green reality, in Government, by ideologically driven policies. Many Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs do not believe that Green policies are practical in our country. Coalition colleagues complain now but they should have known what was coming.

The lesson, of course, is, that when somebody says something, no matter how ludicrous or illthought-out, you are best to believe they mean it. Past statements or actions will be indicative of what they mean to do in government.

Any pleas for pragmatism, for a delay in carbon emissions’ targets in the wake of the Ukraine war, were rebuffed by the Greens.

Fine Gael’s Michael Ring claims in this newspaper today that Ryan has failed to meet any of the farming organisations to discuss a 25% reduction in emissions from this sector.

No serious person dismisses the peril of the world’s climate crisis. Yet Government is also a serious business.

While the wolves were not reintroduced, the Greens were, to Government. Ryan was given a bloated backroom staff to equal the staffs of Varadkar and Martin.

Last week this newspaper revealed that Ryan took a delegation of 55 to Egypt for the environmental jamboree Cop27. Over 30 made their own way, we’re told, but for some reason three weeks after this newspaper began asking questions, mystery still surrounds the travelling caravan, with paid advisers apparently unable to answer basic questions on the topic.

SINCE the Government was formed in June 2020, the Greens have conformed to stereotype. There has been rank disobedience, where members are often permitted to vote against the Government whip without censure. They also oppose their own Government’s policy in the courts, without punishment.

You may say TDs Neasa Hourigan and Patrick Costello eventually lost the whip for voting against the Government. Yet, Hourigan kept her committee chairmanship. Government minister Joe O’Brien defied the whip in the early days of the Coalition and kept his job. It is unheard of in my time covering politics for a minister to do so without being immediately sacked.

Costello is a serial rebel. He claimed he was entitled to go to the courts to challenge the EU-Canada trade agreement. Yet, in March 2021, Varadkar told his party that he viewed the matter as more serious than a Coalition TD voting against the Government. Yet Costello and Hourigan are to be readmitted to the Green parliamentary party.

If the perils facing the globe are eased by Green policies, then some would empathise. But Fianna Fáil backbenchers like James O’Connor have pointed out that Greens opposing road plans will alienate voters, of all types. Hourigan now wants to introduce legislation that could curb State funding for the greyhound and horseracing industries. Again, this is not seen as an immediate environmental threat, but as a threat to rural life.

Varadkar and Martin ignored Ryan’s ramblings after the election – they could reassure themselves that they had to form a government after months of negotiations, for general good. When this effectively became a minority government at the temporary suspension of the two Green TDs, I was surprised at a minister’s langour over lunch. The Government, I was told, is less reliant on the Greens than apparent. Government majorities are more fluid now, there are at least 10 Independent TDs that the Coalition can rely on.

Influence and access counts now for Independents, not single-issue, one-termism.

Tipperary Independent Michael Lowry has spent a quarter of a century voting with governments of different hues.

The Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil leaderships could say that their coalition with the Greens was the will of the public. That would not be true, 2020 was a highly unusual election.

The mass hand-wringing in the political establishment over the advance of Sinn Féin is focused on the disembowelling of Fianna Fáil; or the impending ideological showdown with Fine Gael; or the prediction that it will annihilate more obviously leftist parties.

Yet, in 2020, more Green candidates benefited from sparse Sinn Féin tickets than any others. They took the transfers that would have gone to Sinn Féin candidates: those transfers will not be available next time. The Greens won over 7% in 2020 but have fallen to 4% in some polls, and others have them closer to the 2.7% which saw them with two seats after 2016.

This is the context for the serial rebelliousness of Costello and Hourigan who represent Dublin South Central and Dublin Central respectively. Aengus Ó Snodaigh will have a running mate south of the Liffey and Mary Lou MacDonald, too, north of it. Similarly, turbulent Green minister Joe O’Brien will face Louise O’Reilly and a running mate in Dublin Fingal. Those Greens are in grave danger.

The Coalition parties are facing significant losses in Dublin. Of course, the three parties as a whole, and the Greens as an individual party, could save some seats in the capital if they showed flexibility on planning and vehicle emissions.

If they continue in this vein, with a leader refusing to dispel rural doubts, then all the seats will go outside Dublin too.

The Greens were given an extraordinary opportunity in 2020, they had a duty to compromise and show that wolves and carpools were aberrations.

Sadly, those were portents of what was to come.