Greens were authors of their own downfall

COMMENT

Green Party leader John Gormley blamed Fianna Fáil at the weekend for his party’s annihilation at the polls. Or at least he claimed that it was his party’s association with Fianna Fáil that caused them to lose all their seats. Talk about being savaged by a dead sheep!

If I were a member of Fianna Fáil I might say that Fianna Fáil was damaged by association with the Green Party.
Over the years, I have admired the Greens. I have admired that party’s ideals, its integrity and the honesty of its members. I praised them in Government when they were condemned on all sides. They showed a maturity by staying inside when very unpopular decisions were being taken.
But they seemed to have lost their marbles during the final weeks of the Government’s life. We all knew from the beginning that they were going to have to pull the plug eventually. But I would have thought they might stay inside until certain pieces of legislation they wanted and were in the pipeline, were enacted
They handled the whole thing in such a ham-fisted way that we didn’t know whether they were in or out.
Now John Gormley is acting as if they were not the authors of their own downfall.
But having got that off my chest I am genuinely sorry that we will have no Green TD in the 31st Dáil. I strongly believe we need a Green Party presence if we want to protect our environment and keep corruption at bay. While we can do without the antics of Paul Gogarty and the twittering of Dan Boyle, we need the integrity of people like Trevor Sargent, Eamon Ryan and Brian Meaney and while we can do without people like John Gormley blaming others for his own misfortunes, we’ll forgive him for losing his head in the heat of losing his seat.
The big story of the election was, of course, the extent of the Fianna Fáil losses. This has been discussed at length over the past week. It came as no surprise because the opinion polls had been predicting such an outcome since the start of the year.
Having studied each constituency carefully, I thought myself last Friday that Fianna Fáil would hold 24 seats in the new Dáil but I would not have been surprised if it managed to keep 30 seats.
Whether the party can pick itself up over the next five years is the big question now. They are in a far worse position than Fine Gael were after the 2002 disaster. They have far fewer seats than Fine Gael had then.
But, more importantly, Fine Gael were never hated as much as Fianna Fáil are now. That hatred is so deep that it will not go away very quickly.
I can understand that hatred. I hated Fianna Fáil myself when I was younger but I got over it with maturity.
I think that young people who detest Fianna Fáil now may come to hate Fine Gael more. However, it might take another 10 years before Fianna Fáil are back in power. If ever. The party may just fade away but somehow I think Micheál Martin may, in opposition, give it the kiss of life it needs – if he has the patience.
The election was a triumph for everyone outside the Government. So Fine Gael, being the biggest party, got the highest number of votes. Labour, being the second biggest, got the second highest number of votes. It was a question of anybody but Fianna Fáil and the Greens.
We cannot look into a crystal ball and predict what is going to happen to the political map here over the next year, not to talk of the next five years.
It will not be easy for Fine Gael and Labour but it is important that they hammer out a deal between them and that they stick to that deal. There will be issues that will threaten their stability and they may lose a few deputies along the way but they have such a large majority that they can afford to lose some.
There will always be people in the Labour Party opposed to propping up another party in government but we need stability now more than ever and the only stable government on offer is one between Fine Gael and Labour.
And what of Sinn Féin? That party could be on the cusp of a major breakthrough. However, it could just as easily lose all the gains made in this election. If Fianna Fáil and the Greens are to make a comeback, that comeback will be at the expense of Fine Gael and Labour but also, perhaps, at the expense of Sinn Féin too.
Up to now, Sinn Féin has tried not to alienate any potential supporters. It has had something for everybody and it will probably continue that policy in opposition.
I just hope it acts with some degree of responsibility in the new Dáil rather than attacking everything the new coalition proposes for the sake of its own popularity.
I am delighted to see Gerry Adams elected to the 31st Dáil and with such a huge majority. The fact that he is a native of Belfast gave him the same right to stand for the Dáil as anyone from Cork, Clare, Louth or any other part of Ireland. Some people seem to forget that.
He will have a lot to contribute and I only hope it will all be positive. But under our system, that’s a very difficult thing to do in opposition. We will see.