Minister for the Environment John Gormley has entered the contest for the leadership of the Green Party against the former Dublin MEP, Patricia McKenna.
Mr Gormley formally announced yesterday that he would be putting his name forward before nominations close on Friday. The party members will then vote by postal ballot.
"I have taken a bit of time out to reflect on this and I have spoken to my colleagues in the parliamentary party.
"I spoke yesterday to our deputy leader Mary White and I spoke quite a while ago to Trevor himself," Mr Gormley told RTÉ's This Week programme.
Trevor Sargent announced he would be resigning as leader of the Greens on the night the party agreed to go into coalition with Fianna Fáil.
Mr Gormley said that in other countries the leadership of the Greens had always been taken by somebody in Government.
Mr Gormley said it was a very strange feeling being in Government after spending 25 years in politics and after everything that had happened during the election and after it.
He said he had been very pleasantly surprised by the reception he had got in the Civil Service, by their breadth of knowledge and commitment.
"It has been overwhelming in some cases. They share my passion and commitment for environmental protection."
He said that this was in evidence at the EU Council of Ministers meeting in Luxembourg last week when the Greens managed to shift Irish Government policy.
He said the Greens had already delivered a shift in policy on the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Ireland had been voting in favour of GMOs but the other parties in the coalition had co-operated in a change, with the Minister for Health abstaining on a vote while he had voted against GMOs.
He said there had also been a shift in Government policy on incineration. He had insisted that incineration should be regarded as waste disposal rather than recovery. Mr Gormley said he wanted Ireland to have the best waste disposal policy in Europe, one where incineration was no longer seen as the cornerstone.
Fine Gael has tabled a Dáil motion for debate this week demanding that Mr Gormley drop the plan to build a waste incinerator at Poolbeg in Dublin.
Fine Gael environment spokesman Fergus O'Dowd said the Government had no mandate for the incinerator as more than 300,000 Dubliners voted for candidates opposed to it. He said the Minister could abandon the plan under powers granted to him in the Waste Management Act, 1996.
"The plan to build an incinerator at Poolbeg was ill-conceived and has been rejected by Dublin's voters. The FF-Green Government must now abandon it or explain why they are ignoring the wishes of the people.
"The Greens, in particular, will have to explain why they performed yet another spectacular policy U-turn and how this incinerator is beneficial to all those who voted against it," he said.
