THE GREEN Party’s greatest mistake in government has been too much focus on maintaining the stability of the Coalition with Fianna Fáil, its chairman, Senator Dan Boyle, has said.
In a speech to a meeting of the European Greens in Barcelona on Saturday, Mr Boyle made a number of hard-hitting criticisms of the party’s performance since it entered Coalition in 2007.
He said in the earlier period of government all disagreements between the Greens and Fianna Fáil were resolved internally between the Coalition partners.
“This helped create a perception that in policy terms we were being walked over; that the policies of the Government were almost exclusively the policies of the larger party in government.”
Mr Boyle said the Greens had contributed to their own difficulties. “We have become our own worst enemies. We have repeated to ourselves from within the party and out towards the wider public the criticisms made of us by our opponents. For much of our time in government we have had not needed an opposition from other political parties; we have been too successful in being our own opposition.”
During the speech, Mr Boyle outlined the many difficulties experienced by the party in its transition from opposition party to government party.
He also admitted that the programme for Government negotiated in 2007 was unsatisfactory.
“Negotiations were difficult, very intense and very much run to a deadline,” he said.
“While there was much in the programme for Government in which we could take a great deal of pride, there were several elements which we failed to achieve on, and were subsequently picked up by elements in the party, but more particularly by opposition parties as a stick with which to subsequently beat us.”
Mr Boyle said the party did gain a notable success by getting two senior Ministers in the key portfolios of environment, and communications and energy, and a Minister of State.
Meanwhile, the Green Party’s national convention, which takes place in Waterford next weekend, is set to attract protest rallies from a number of groups, including pro-hunting campaigners and the left-wing People Before Profit Alliance.
RISE! (Rural Ireland Says Enough!), a group established to support “traditional field sports and rural pastimes”, will stage a demonstration to protest against the proposed ban on stag-hunting and other animal welfare legislation, which was included in the renewed programme for Government at the insistence of the Greens.
Announcing the plans yesterday, a RISE! spokesman said “thousands” of supporters from the southeast region “and further afield” are expected to join the demonstration at noon on Saturday.