Michael O’Leary of Ryanair’s wish for the Greens to be “weeded out” is not going to happen because the party is already growing back stronger.
That’s the defiant message from a demob-happy Eamon Ryan, the former Green Party leader who bowed out of electoral politics at last month’s general election.
Ryan’s swansong did not hit high notes. Instead, there was an almost total wipeout of his party after a bruising campaign that did not resonate with the people even though the world is in the throes of a climate crisis. Ryan’s successor, Roderic O’Gorman, was the party’s sole TD to be elected, down from the 12 elected in 2020.
The outgoing Minister for Climate, Environment and Communications – with responsibility for energy and transport (he remains a Minister until the next government is formed) – cannot be accused of riding off into the sunset by retiring from the Dáil without facing up to what happened. Rather, he accepts his part in November’s inglorious electoral outing, while outlining where they might have played it differently.
However, he scoffs at suggestions – including in a report commissioned by Friends of the Earth – that Labour and the Social Democrats had more climate-friendly manifestos than the Greens had; Ryan says that if those parties were really serious about climate change, they would have found a way to form the next government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
“We took a real hit in the election,” says Ryan. “We were getting attacked from every single front. We were getting attacked from rural independents and Fianna Fáil trying to protect their electoral flank from that side.”
“We were attacked from Ryanair ... we were attacked from behind, in terms of our own environmental NGOs kind of saying, ‘oh, Soc Dems and Labour are more ambitious on climate’, but I’m sorry if they’re ambitious on climate, they’d be going into government now.”
He acknowledges negotiations on government formation can be difficult, with much hinging on seat numbers – “but the numbers on climate side are so dramatic, and the ambition is needed so desperately that if you really were that ambitious, you’d be engaged in serious talks now not, what seems to me, not real engagement.”
It was a convenient trope to portray the Greens as being anti-rural. I think in hindsight, maybe, we should kick back a bit more and say, ‘hold on a sec, this is absolute rubbish’
Ryan is adamant the Greens can grow back stronger. Having previously rebuilt the party from almost nothing, he says 2024 is different from the obliteration of all seats in 2011.
“We’re halfway back already, because we’ve got presence in the Dáil [through O’Gorman] and – touch wood – all going well, we’ll have the presence in the Seanad,” Ryan adds.
“Therefore you’re in a similar situation to where myself and Catherine [Martin, who also lost her seat] were in 2016. We have 25 councillors now, and we have incredibly strong experience in government – in local, European and national government.”
In 2011 there were specific Irish circumstances, he says; in 2024 it is part of a wider trend with environmental issues being a lightning rod in Europe and beyond.
“That will turn, unfortunately, because the issues aren’t going to go away. In 2011 we had zero money. We were running on vapours for five years. I remember, literally the fuel gauge was at the E [empty] for the entire time. I think, ‘Jesus, we get to next week’, whereas we have public funding this time and Oireachtas representation. That’s a very different place to be come back from,” he says.
On hard analysis of where it went wrong, he says: “We’ll do it ourselves. We had a parliamentary party meeting, which was four hours. That kind of honest discussion among ourselves, you do need to do it and you need to learn from your mistakes ... You have to acknowledge what would you do differently.”
He agrees with Laurence Tubiana of the European Climate Foundation who addressed a European Green Council meeting in Dublin recently.
“Even though we took an electoral hammering, she said all the research shows the vast majority of European people, left and right, rural and urban, want to see climate action, want to see climate taken seriously ... and yes, they’re concerned about the impact on them with individual actions and so on.
“But if there’s a sense that if Europe, or any government, is really abandoning the ambition that’s needed, and not addressing the issue, that that silent majority will come back all the stronger.”
The same applies to Ireland, he says, where a large majority wants bolder action.
On former Green TD Marc Ó Cathasaigh’s assertion they did the work but got the communications wrong, Ryan says he doesn’t believe that means having to change the message, “but some things might be different”.
“I held my hand up ... There are things I said which I regret now, that maybe fed into an existing trope: greens versus rural Ireland, that I don’t believe is true – certainly not from our side – or even from the rural Ireland side either,” says Ryan.
“You talk about reintroducing wolves. It actually has a real logic to it but that scared a lot of horses. I was on an early-morning TV show where I was talking about car sharing, and that was read as ‘you want us to get out of our cars in rural Ireland’; that did real damage.
“I could think of loads of instances like that where I maybe said things that fed that narrative, and I regret those. But you have to be careful not to be too careful, like if you end up being guarded in everything you say.”
The mystic philosopher John Moriarty once told him: “Jesus Christ, Eamon, would you speak like Robert Emmett from the dock? Don’t hold back.” His position would be, “I’m with you John”, but occasionally he could have held back.
Although he was portrayed almost as a hate figure, he says he didn’t take it personally, though maybe he should have kicked back more at times. “It was a convenient trope to portray the Greens as being anti-rural. I think in hindsight, maybe, we should kick back a bit more, and say, ‘hold on a sec, this is absolute rubbish’.” At the time he reasoned that would have meat letting others dictate the agenda: “And I felt, just speak your truth and don’t be reactive,” he says.
Asked about whether unachievable climate targets are “driving people mad”, Ryan says “targets are set by the science” yet extremely challenging. At his last European Council meeting, he was sitting with ministers responsible for environment, energy and transport, wrestling with the implications of the new EU target of a 90 per cent reduction in emissions by 2040.
“We were all saying, this is not small and not easy, and particularly when you get into the hard-to-abate sectors, like how are we going to do aviation, how are we going to do steel, how are we going to do cement, which is when you get into really tricky stuff. And so you’re right to raise the question, should we aim for that? Or should we say we don’t think it’s realistic,” he says.
He rejects the view of “some of our environmental colleagues and others” who say, “‘oh, it’s just a lack of political will, that is why we’re not meeting these targets ... if only the politicians were more ambitious, it would all be easy to do’“.
“The scale of the next change is incredibly challenging, because you really are going to the Nth degree,” says Ryan, who believes Europe will still commit to a 90 per cent cut because its economic situation is imperilled.
“Are we going to be more competitive by burning fossil fuels like importing LNG from the States or gas from Qatar or oil from Saudi Arabia? No, so Europe is doubling down.”
He doesn’t see an alternative, “in climate terms but also in economic terms”. It was equally hard in Ireland, he says, but they had put in place the greenest programme for government ever in 2020 “because we were in a very strong negotiating position.
“We were experienced, because we had been in government before. We had a lot of public support. We did well in the election, and we were really prepared.”
While he complains about Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil tacking right, there were good relations with Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, former taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe and Fine Gael Taoiseach Simon Harris, “unlike in Germany, where colleagues couldn’t agree what time of day it was”.
“We had a good budget situation, and we were able to deliver real change ... the start of transformation which is real in energy particularly, but also in agriculture and transport, which are three big areas we need to change,” he says.
There are positive tipping points, including a solar revolution, a switch to electric vehicles and increased active travel. Scaling up to 22 gigawatts of wind energy (more than four times current electricity demand) and enhancing the electricity grid were deliverable.
Ryan says he is more frustrated than anyone about delays, particularly in planning, while the question has to be asked if the legal system is helping to deliver for the common good.
“Or are we just getting caught up in litigation that is really hindering our ability to protect ourselves and the environment?” he says.
His most challenging time in government was in the summer of 2023. The Coalition realised they were “going to have this big corporate tax surplus”, and agreed much of it needed to be put away to avoid overheating the economy.
The Future Ireland Fund emerged but the Greens sensed there was a major funding gap in the National Development Plan under climate and nature restoration that made targets impossible to achieve.
Although their analysis was supported by cross-department taskforces, a stand-off arose.
“We had all-out war on that because I think the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform saw it as a bit of a grab, using our leverage to get money, a separate budget process,” says Ryan.
“In September, we presented further analysis that their own departments had been responsible for, and it was agreed: okay, we do need something like €3.15 billion ... That was probably one of our most significant wins in government.”
A bitter pill was to follow. After it was nailed down over the course of this year, Ryan presented a memo in the closing weeks of government.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael wouldn’t allow it to go to government. Similarly, a memo from the sustainable mobility taskforce was parked. Both were the culmination of years’ work within their own departments.
“They said: ‘Oh no, this is all too last minute. This is rushed.‘ That really annoyed me because that was just for short-term political reasons. They thought, we have election in three weeks’ time. We don’t want to be ruffling the feathers of Healy-Raes [the Independent Kerry TDs who have resisted Green policies], shouting, crying foul on this. So they pulled them.”
He expects there will be champions in the next government who will accept the logic for their implementation, “because if they don’t, where do you get the money from?”.
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