Denis Staunton
Arthur Beesley
The Leinster MEP, Ms Nuala Ahern, has threatened to leave the Green group in the European Parliament in protest against her exclusion from a debate yesterday on Ireland's EU presidency.
Ms Ahern accused her Dublin colleague, Ms Patricia McKenna, of using underhand tactics to ensure she was the only Irish Green to participate in the debate with the Taoiseach in Strasbourg.
This was strongly denied by Ms McKenna, who said her participation was appropriate because she is seeking re-election this year.
But with some Green TDs agreeing in private that the public confrontation between the two MEPs was unseemly, the party leader, Mr Trevor Sargent, said he wanted to speak to Ms Ahern and Ms McKenna as soon as possible.
Ms Ahern, who will not seek re-election at this year's European elections, said she will remain a member of the Green Party in Ireland but would now consider leaving the Green group in the European Parliament.
"I feel very betrayed by my group, not by my party at home. I would be very reluctant to do it but I am certainly going to think about it," she said.
The Green group was allocated eight minutes of speaking time in yesterday's debate, including three for their leader, Mr Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
On Monday afternoon, Ms Ahern was told by Green officials that she would be given one minute, while Ms McKenna would have two.
Before a meeting of the group's MEPs on Monday evening, however, Ms McKenna told Ms Ahern that, since the Dublin MEP was seeking re-election in June, she should be the only Irish speaker.
"Patricia didn't want me to speak because she said I would get all the press coverage. I don't think she has had any trouble getting the limelight and I'm not seeking the limelight," Ms Ahern said.
Ms Ahern was keen to speak yesterday, however, because she wanted to ask the Taoiseach to use the Irish presidency to promote a review of the Euratom treaty, which allows governments to fund nuclear plants such as Sellafield without reference to EU rules on state aid.
She left Monday evening's meeting before it ended and a decision was taken after she left to strike her name from the list of speakers.
"Patricia and I have differed before. Colleagues can differ and she hasn't been the easiest of colleagues. But I found this very underhand," Ms Ahern said.
She publicised her position by speaking yesterday to the News at One programme on RTÉ Radio.
But Ms McKenna insisted that the group had simply applied the rules in allowing only one Irish MEP to speak.
"There was no plot. There was no attempt to stitch her up. It's unfortunate she feels this way," Ms McKenna said.
While Mr Sargent attempted to make light of the confrontation by describing it as a "storm in a teacup", he said: "The logic of the situation is for the person going for election to speak if it comes down to one speaker."
The Dublin TD, Mr John Gormley, who did not hear the radio programme, said: "It would be preferable if these things were discussed in private." The Cork TD, Mr Dan Boyle, said the argument was about "limelight". "It doesn't do much for the people concerned."
The dispute between Ms Ahern and Ms McKenna runs along a fault-line long entrenched in the party. Ms McKenna's staunch opposition to much of the European project is in contrast with the stance of Ms Ahern, who tends to be in line with mainstream Green opinion elsewhere in the EU. With the party reassessing its attitude to Europe, this division reflects different strands of opinion within the movement.
While the party believes it has a nuanced and principled pro-Europe policy, its stance in the two Nice referendums aligned it with the anti-EU groups such as the No to Nice Campaign and the National Platform group. In the words of one TD, "we were being lobbed in with a bunch of perceived loonies like the No to Nice Campaign and perceived hypocrites in terms of Sinn Féin's anti-militaristic stance".
Ms McKenna was among those in the Greens who publicly criticised its former environment spokesman, Mr Ciarán Cuffe TD, over his holding of shares in oil companies. She said Mr Cuffe was guilty of not having the "cop-on" to understand that holding shares in companies with questionable environmental records was a "political timebomb".
Barrage of goodwill: page 10