When the Green Party entered government for the first time, with Fianna Fáil, it was described as a deal with the devil. In these extracts from her new book, MARY MINIHANtraces the Greens' turbulent, and politically costly, time in power
The odd couple: the conflict-avoider and the fretter
Entering coalition with Fianna Fáil in June 2007 meant the Greens had to plot a course for Planet Bertie – a derisory nickname for the world inhabited by the Fianna Fáil leader that John Gormley had coined as recently as February of that year.
John Gormley’s only party colleague in the cabinet was Eamon Ryan, an optimist and a skilled communicator whose manner sometimes strayed past the passionate and visionary and towards the evangelical.
The photogenic Ryan, who had briefly considered running for the presidency in 2004, and who would go on to lead the shell-shocked party after this year’s devastating general election, rarely attracted the level of anger that Gormley inspired, thanks in part to his ability to deflect criticism, avoid unwinnable arguments and keep talking about policy in interviews and media appearances, no matter what the question had been.
The delicately balanced relationship between Ryan and Gormley was central to most of the party’s failures and successes in power. Although they maintained the outward appearance of a united front, they were an odd couple whose relationship was not always perfectly harmonious.
Their innate personality differences meant they were often at odds when it came to both strategy and style. Ryan, who seemed to wake up happy every day, avoided conflict; Gormley was a fretter who did not shrink from a good row. Close party colleagues said the pair did not talk enough and failed to co-ordinate their approach to cabinet discussions.
One afternoon Gormley and a key aide were chatting in the Dáil canteen about environmentally-friendly travel arrangements for a work trip abroad. “How would Eamon cross the water?” Gormley wondered aloud. “Oh, he’s walking,” came the tongue-in-cheek response.
Death by Twitter: the fall of two ministers
Green parliamentarians often seemed to be speaking a different language from that of their coalition partners, particularly when Greens used new technology to get their message across. Dan Boyle, who was made a senator after losing his Cork South-Central Dáil seat in 2007, was ahead of the pack when it came to communicating directly with the public, using Twitter at a time when most elected representatives preferred to use the filter of a spokesperson. Sometimes the tone of the Twitter conversations was constructive, but often it was hostile and bitterly confrontational. Boyle’s ability to rub people up the wrong way tended to come to the fore when he used this particular medium.
“And then the Willie O’Dea thing happened,” he said, referring to the Greens’ decision, in February last year, to back Willie O’Dea, the Fianna Fáil minister, in a motion of confidence after controversial remarks he made about a political opponent in Limerick. After the vote, in well under the 140 characters allowed by Twitter, Boyle complained that he was “not happy” and said the Greens had been “bounced” into supporting the motion. Despite winning the motion of confidence, O’Dea stood down the next day.
There was more trauma for the Greens the following week, and this time the trouble was much closer to home. Trevor Sargent resigned his ministry after admitting to contacting a garda about a case involving a constituent. The entire political establishment was surprised that Sargent, of all people, would become embroiled in such a controversy. One woman TD from another party, shaking her head in disbelief, said: “He’s as dull as dishwater but just so decent.” For the Greens, this latest revelation was no laughing matter.
The bewildered Greens huddled together under a portico outside LH 2000, the modern extension to Leinster House. It was clear they were now unsure who they could trust. An unusually candid, and visibly shaken, Gormley admitted to being in an “emotional state” and “shell-shocked”. Gormley was asked if he rejected the opposition accusation that Fianna Fáil had leaked the information that resulted in Sargent’s resignation. Ominously for the coalition’s stability, there was no clear expression of trust in Fianna Fáil. Even the ever-upbeat Ryan admitted that “the Trevor thing was difficult”. Sargent’s nerves were clearly much steadier than those of his colleagues. He was in chatty form and looked cool and collected. There was only one explanation: Sargent was in early election mode.
Three little letters: IMF
In November last year, with the government preparing to apply for a bailout, Gormley was doing all he could to persuade his parliamentary colleagues that the game was up for the Greens in government, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. In hindsight, Gormley says: “I think the cleanest of all would have been about the time of the IMF and just said, ‘Bye bye. It’s over. Clean break. We’re gone.’ That would have been simple, clean, but my colleagues said, ‘No, we have to do the right thing by the country.’ ”
Possibly as a result of his natural pessimism, Gormley was way ahead of the rest of the Greens when it came to understanding that the IMF delegation was approaching Irish shores.
Assessing Gormley’s leadership during this period, Sargent said: “John is capable of depths of despair, all right, but he’s also capable of great incisive and intuitive determination. When others don’t see how things are panning out, John will call it and people will appreciate that somebody has called it, because it wasn’t going to be called otherwise.”
Ryan stayed in the background during this process but was involved to some extent in trying to get party leaders to meet each other through his close contact with Simon Coveney of Fine Gael. The pair would escape Leinster House by walking around one of Dublin’s best-known Georgian areas to clear their heads. The tall, slim, striding duo talked through strategies that might bring the leaders of the Civil War parties together. “I’d meet him at the gate, and we’d go and do a few laps of Merrion Square, just talking through, ‘Okay, how are we going to do this?’”
Sargent says that the arrival of the International Monetary Fund essentially meant it was curtains for the programme for government and time for the Greens to leave the coalition. “It was like three in a bed then. There was Fianna Fáil, the Greens . . . and the IMF.”
Governing in a parallel universe
In January this year, in his troubled final weeks as taoiseach, Brian Cowen called a Fianna Fáil motion of confidence in his leadership of the party. He won it, and his challenger Micheál Martin resigned from cabinet.
“Brian Cowen is back: bigger and better than ever,” Eamon Ryan recalled. The Greens were pleased that the fog of despair that enveloped the taoiseach had appeared to lift in the immediate aftermath of his victory. But “somebody mentioned the possibility of a reshuffle”, Ryan said. “Then it went absolutely mad.”
Cowen had decided that ministers who were not contesting the general election should resign and be replaced through promotions from the junior ranks. The Greens disagreed, and vetoed Cowen’s bungled attempt at a reshuffle.
The party knew they had to say goodbye to ever seeing their most cherished proposals – even those relating to climate change – becoming law. Publicly, they continued to insist that some of the legislation they had sponsored would be passed, but the Greens knew the bitterness between the coalition partners meant only the Finance Bill, to enact the budget, would be prioritised.
Sargent likened the relationship between the Greens and Fianna Fáil to that of a splitting couple.“It was like a couple separating and saying, ‘What about the children? Let’s stay together to get the children sorted,’ and the child was the Finance Bill.”
“Climate change and corporate donations and the [Dublin] mayoral Bill: they were like children that we were planning to adopt, but we decided not to go ahead because they wouldn’t have had a good upbringing against that background,” he joked. “Hopefully, they’ll find a good home when the next marriage made in heaven happens.”
Military metaphors: Waterloo or Dunkirk?
On January 22nd Cowen announced that he was resigning as leader of Fianna Fáil but remaining as taoiseach, after senior party colleagues gave him “time and space” to consider the implications of the aborted reshuffle. The Greens pulled out of government the following day.
They had planned to meet at Gormley’s house the day after Cowen resigned but decided at the last minute to meet instead at Government Buildings at 11.30am. They had a big decision to make, and opinion was divided even at this late stage. The atmosphere at the meeting was “very intense . . . it was heavy”, Boyle recalled. “There were raised voices; there was loose language; there was tension that might have resulted in emotional release.”
It was inevitable that someone would crack. The newest member of the group, Mark Dearey, a senator for just 11 months, found the discussions particularly hard going, and the soft-centred Dundalk man broke down in tears.
Sargent’s mind was clear. “The mood was very frank. Each of us was asked to really think this through. Could we continue on? Was this the right time to go? And I was certainly convinced that this was the time, and the majority were,” Sargent said.
Two prominent members of the Green’s parliamentary group wanted the party to remain in power. Ryan and Ciarán Cuffe – two of the four who would have to write letters of ministerial resignation if the Greens pulled out – wanted to stay in government for legacy and policy reasons.
“Ciarán and Eamon . . . are very policy-focused, and delivering in government and the consequences are secondary. [For them] it’s the legacy of what we can do given this opportunity, which is valid, and we all explored that. And then we explored the other,” Sargent said.
Cuffe had always cautioned colleagues against using military metaphors in politics, but Gormley was extremely fond of an analogy about Waterloo and Dunkirk. “Waterloo was the end of Napoleon – that was it, gone – but Dunkirk was the beginning of a fightback. That’s the way I see it,” he said. “But I think we will re-emerge. I think it will be a very different party. I think the party will become far more aggressive, in a sense . . . The party won’t be taking any prisoners ever again.”
This is an edited extract from A Deal with the Devil: The Green Party in Governmentby Mary Minihan, published by Maverick House
