Green Party performance: Despite high expectations, the Greens failed to capitalise on the swing against the Government parties, writes Arthur Beesley.
What was looking late last night as the possible loss of the two Green seats in the European Parliament is a serious setback for a party which failed also to realise its stated target of trebling its number of local authority seats.
While the Green Party was set yesterday to double its presence on the local authorities to about 16 seats from eight, the party failed to capitalise in a big way on the swing against the Government parties. Despite the Fianna Fáil collapse on Dublin City Council and the failure of the PDs to make major inroads on the council, all the Greens could do was to win a single seat in Clontarf.
"At best, it's been a consolidating election," said the Cork TD, Mr Dan Boyle. Yet the picture improves somewhat when the party's solid performance in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Fingal is taken into account. The Greens took four seats in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown with 10.2 per cent of the first preference vote and took three seats in Fingal with 8.2 per cent of first preferences. This demonstrates the party's capacity to grow its electoral base.
Still, the party won less than half the 35 local authority seats mooted by some of its more optimistic TDs. It was poised late last night to take some 4 per cent of the local election votes, up from 2.52 per cent in 1999, but spread across a wider base after the party ran 150 candidates.
Such an outcome is all the more disappointing when compared with the party's success in the last general election, when now-prominent figures such as Mr Boyle and Mr Éamon Ryan were among four new TDs to join Mr Trevor Sargent and Mr John Gormley in the Dáil. In addition, the likely loss of its two seats in Brussels will deprive the party of a valued presence at the heart of European politics, where the international Green movement has far stronger clout than at home.
But all is not bleak. The European campaign of Ms Mary White in East might well improve her prospects in the next general election in Carlow-Kilkenny. Ms Patricia McKenna too is likely to seek a Dáil seat in Dublin. The Greens can also point to new seats in Clare, Kilkenny and elsewhere as evidence that their appeal is growing.
Despite the Greens' sustained efforts to establish themselves as indisputable members of the government-in-waiting, the party was not a major beneficiary of the anti-Government swing.