Greens must be prepared to negotiate if they want to be part of the next government, writes Stephen Collins
The prospect of a change of government after next year's election could well depend on the performance of the Greens. While the party has declined to commit itself to a pre-election pact, a majority of its TDs are clearly interested in getting into power for the first time and they have been long enough in politics to know this will involve compromise.
Producing coherent policies that can appeal to a cross section of voters, rather than focusing on global issues outside its control, is crucial to the party's ambitions. The Neighbourhood Noise Bill, published by the party yesterday, represents the kind of policy initiative that is capable of impressing the voters and demonstrating that in government the Greens will improve the quality of life for ordinary people.
The party's long standing focus on energy is becoming ever more relevant while issues like transport, planning and food and water quality also have a wide appeal. The production of attractive policies that will disprove the constantly repeated Fianna Fáil charge that the party is on the lunatic fringe of politics is critical for long-term success.
It has become clear in recent times that Fianna Fáil does not really believe the Greens are as extreme as it claims. Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern raised the prospect of a coalition deal with the Greens and this has been echoed by other Government figures. Party leader Trevor Sargent has firmly rebuffed the Fianna Fáil advances and, while some of his colleagues might have preferred to leave the door to that option slightly ajar, a coalition involving the two parties is still an unlikely prospect. Mr Sargent and most of his parliamentary colleagues would prefer to do business with Fine Gael and Labour as they have worked together reasonably well in Opposition. It will depend on all three parties having a good election and recent opinion polls indicate that they have a chance of getting enough seats to form a Government. That prospect will become even more attainable if there are good transfers between them.
What has been heartening from a Green Party point of view is that the polls show the party vote holding up particularly well in Dublin. A big danger for the party is that a revitalised Fine Gael might cannibalise Green Party seats in constituencies like Dún Laoghaire and Dublin South. Fine Gael lost seats to the Greens in both constituencies last time out and will make a huge effort to win them back.
If the polls are right, the Greens are holding their own in those middle-class constituencies and the party should be able to withstand a Fine Gael comeback which will have to take place at somebody else's expense. That will put Progressive Democrat rather than Green seats under pressure not just in Dún Laoghaire and Dublin South but in South East and South West as well. The outcome in these four constituencies will have a big bearing on the outcome of the election.
Showing the voters that they are a party that is interested in power rather than a protest should actually help the Greens to retain their existing seats and put them in contention for a few more in constituencies like Carlow-Kilkenny, Galway West, Louth and Wicklow. Even the farmers, the group who regard the Greens as the biggest threat to their livelihood, may have been encouraged to think again by the way the sugar beet industry finally folded.
The Greens had long proclaimed the need to prepare for the end of the sugar industry by switching from the growing of sugar beet to growing bio fuels and turning the sugar factories into energy generating plants. The Government ignored the problem and the sugar industry collapsed. By the time the farmers came around to accepting the Green Party assessment of the position, it was too late.
The big problem facing the Greens on the road to coalition could lie in convincing the party activists that they should follow this route. It was the members who rejected the notion of a pre-election pact with Fine Gael and Labour two years ago, despite the clear wishes of a majority of the parliamentary party. Many members came to the party through community activism and protest and bringing them around to the notion that the party should dirty its hands by taking office could be the most difficult task facing Mr Sargent and TDs like Eamon Ryan, Dan Boyle and Ciarán Cuffe who have made a significant impact in the Dáil since their election in 2002.
Leading party members were hugely influenced by a meeting two years ago with a leading German Green who told them that if they were not prepared to negotiate then they were not ready for power.
He pointed out that the German Greens struggled mightily before abandoning opposition to nuclear power as part of a 2000 deal with their then coalition partner the Social Democrats. The Green Party in Ireland will not be asked to abandon such a fundamental policy, for the simple reason that we do not have a nuclear industry, but the underlying issue is the same. Will the party be prepared to serve loyally in coalition on a negotiated programme which contains some of the party's policies but by no means all of them? That will be the real test of political maturity.