The Green Party chairman, Dublin South East TD Mr John Gormley, will face a challenge for his position in an election later this month. Clare County Council member Mr Brian Meaney began his campaign to win the chairmanship on Wednesday, once the period for nominations closed.
The two men are the only candidates in the race which will be decided by a postal ballot of the party's qualifying 1,090 members. The count takes place on October 29th. Voters must be paid-up members of the party for six months.
Strongly critical of the party's performance, he said its public image was "too Dublin-oriented. I feel that it is absolutely essential that we start to be viewed as a national party."
The Green Party's fundamental values, including those on neutrality, would have to be reviewed. "We have to review our perceived notion of neutrality. I do not believe that the policy is too innocent, but whether it is realistic is another thing. That needs to be reviewed," he told The Irish Times.
The party's neutrality stance brings it alongside other organisations which appear to be "anti" everything, thus damaging the party's image with voters at large, he said. "I want to get across to people that the Greens are reasonable members of the community who go about their lives no differently to everybody else."
He believed he would attract support from party members who were unhappy that the Greens had not contested the Presidential election. "The votes will directly reflect, I believe, the discomfort felt in the party about the way in which the Presidential election was dealt with."
In the days running up to the Greens' national council meeting outside Clonakilty, Co Cork, last month, Mr Meaney had favoured running Green TD Mr Eamon Ryan. However Mr Gormley and party leader Mr Sargent had quietly opposed contesting, arguing that it would cost too much and could not be organised in time.
The 60-member national council, partly in response to these urgings, then decided unanimously not to press Mr Ryan's nomination.
Mr Meaney, elected in Clare's Ennis ward in June, said: "The chairman's position should be moved outside the Pale and outside the parliamentary party. This is an election that has to happen. John Gormley is well-regarded, but this would start to offer a different image for the party."
Mr Meaney insisted he was not criticising the party leader who he described as "incredibly hard-working. Other members of the parliamentary party can be quite hard to contact, but at any stage of the day or night you can pick up a phone and speak with Trevor .
He said he had travelled "on a steep learning curve" since his own election to understand the difficulties "in getting the system to work in the way that you want. We may have to drop some of our highest principles."