Minister for the Environment and newly elected Green Party leader John Gormley said today he will lead on the basis of "consensus and collegiality", following in the footsteps of his predecessor Trevor Sargent.
Mr Gormley today acknowledged the party had to make compromises in order to enter government with Fianna Fáil and that the strategy "carried risks" for the Greens.
Minister for the Environment and newly elected Green Party leader John Gormley
But he insisted the move was the right one and that his party would make an impact on politics, particularly in the area of climate change, over the five-year Programme for Government.
Mr Gormley was elected leader of the Green Party yesterday evening with 65 per cent of the votes cast by party members. The only other candidate, former MEP Patricia McKenna, received 35 per cent.
Immediately following his election, Mr Gormley insisted the strong vote for Ms McKenna was not a sign of growing dissent in the party and that it had been a vote on the leadership and not on the Greens' decision to enter Government with Fianna Fáil.
Only 13 per cent of the party's members voted against the coalition move in an historic ballot at the Mansion House following the May general election.
John Gormley
Ms McKenna strongly opposed the move to go into Government.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Irelandprogramme today, Mr Gormley said the party had predicted a 60-40 split in the ballot. He said he was happy with the result and it had been "healthy" to have the competition for the leadership.
He said he believed he would now have an opportunity to make changes in his ministry and he intended to engage with the party membership to "give them ownership of this project". He would start this week by meeting Green Party councillors in Louth and Donegal.
The Minister acknowledged that going into Government "carried risks".
"There's a lot of heat there, but we're in the kitchen. We're prepared to take that heat," he said.
Mr Gormley said this was a "good analogy" because the biggest issue to be faced was climate change.
"I don't think that has impinged on people's consciousness yet, but it certainly has for us in the Green Party. We know that it's a difficult challenge; we know that we're going to get a kicking at times. But we also know that we've really no choice," he said. "We don't have the luxury of sitting on the opposition benches where you can do nothing. You have to get in there."
Mr Gormley said there were "significant changes" now in how climate change would be tackled at Government level.
"We now have a Cabinet sub-committee headed up by the Taoiseach that is going to deal with this issue, we have a climate change forum, and we have a whole series of issues so that is important to get across to people. And my task, I suppose, as party leader, is to communicate very clearly what we have achieved in the Programme for Government."
On whether the Green Party would suffer electorally due to its decision to go into Government and to take decisions that might be unpopular, Mr Gormley said: "I think it's a valid point ... we could be ahead of the posse. It's always a problem if you're a cutting-edge party that you're always going to have a fairly small *electorate.
"We're not a catch-all party, clearly, and I don't think we ever will be. But I'm hopeful that as people become more educated about the dangers of climate change that people will understand why it was so important for us to go into Government, that we couldn't stay outside of Government."
Mr Gormley said the Greens were not in government "because we're ambitious people".
"We operate within the party on a consensus basis. It's about collegiality."
He said his predecessor Trevor Sargent had been a "very good leader" who operated by consensus and collegiality. Mr Sargent's decision to step down, as he had promised, rather than lead the party into government with Fianna Fail, showed that the party was not about personal ambition, he said.
"He took it on the basis that he had given an undertaking and you could see from that that this was a person of integrity. Clearly, I believe that the party is distinct and different from other parties and that will continue."
John Gormley
Asked about the traditional Green Party view that the Fianna Fáil hospitality tent at the annual Galway Races was the "crucible of Irish corruption", Mr Gormley said his party clearly wanted to see a difference in how political parties are funded.
This would be tackled by the Electoral Commission, he said.
"There are issues around that because you have Fine Gael who get corporate donations, you have the Labour Party who get money from the unions. So it wasn't that simple just to say we're going to ban all that, it has to go into an electoral commission."
He added: "We had to make a decision and it wasn't an easy decision by any means. But, we had to put aside those prejudices that we had and say right 'what's in the best interest of the planet', frankly."
Mr Gormley said he had already initiated a review of the State's archeological policy and would introduce whatever necessary legislative changes emerged from that review.
"We need stronger heritage legislation and indeed we need stronger legislation across a whole range of issues," he said.
This included giving stronger powers to the Environmental Protection Agency so it could enforce environmental protection legislation.
"The litmus test is...after five years have there been fundamental changes. I believe there will be," he said.