Election 2024

Green Party’s meltdown largely due to ‘smaller party in government syndrome’

The party has a sound record on policy implementation yet stands to lose nearly all its seats

Green Party leader Rodrick O'Gorman at the Dublin West count centre at Phibblestown Community Centre on Sunday. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire
Green Party leader Rodrick O'Gorman at the Dublin West count centre at Phibblestown Community Centre on Sunday. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire
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Harry McGee
Sun Dec 01 2024 - 19:00

The immediate comparison that will be made to the Green Party meltdown will be the 2011 wipeout where the party lost all its six TDs.

But the circumstances of that election were exceptional. The economy had crashed, and the troika had arrived to become caretaker managers of the State. This time around there was no such crash. The party had participated in a coalition government at a time when there was a growing economy. Moreover, many of its key policies were implemented by two larger parties which were more pliant to the climate change agenda than any of their predecessors.

The Greens went big on sustainable and public transport, on having bigger ambition for climate change reductions, on promoting biodiversity, on solar and wind power, on promoting the circular economy, and reducing the cost of childcare.

No government party is ever going to achieve 100 per cent success but if you were to judge the party on policy implementation alone it had a record on which to stand. But yet the Greens look like they will lose all but one of its 12 seats, with party leader Roderic O’Gorman in a battle to retain his seat in Dublin West.

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If you were to look for a comparison it is the Progressive Democrats performance in the 2007 election. The PDs went into the election with eight seats and on the back of an economy that was booming. It had got some key policy goals implemented during the period.

Yet it lost all but two of its seats with only Mary Harney and Noel Grealish retaining. Party leader Michael McDowell lost his seat in Dublin South East (now Dublin Bay South) to John Gormley of the Greens. The party limped on for a year or two before petering out.

So why did a party that had been successful in government not come though the election more or less unscathed, as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had done?

Greens deputy leader Catherine Martin put it most succinctly on Saturday when she said it was the “old story of the junior coalition partner getting punished”.

Former leader Eamon Ryan pointed out how much the party had achieved in government. “It was one of those days,” he said. “If you don’t get elected you accept that but you come back stronger and you learn lessons. We’ve done that in the past and we’ll do that again.”

Earlier this year Ryan said that about 10 per cent of the electorate believed climate change was the most important issue and would naturally be Green supporters. However, for some of that cohort the support is evidently not cast-iron.

It is also evident that support for climate change reduces dramatically when it means changes in behaviour or lifestyle or when there is a cost involved. In other words most parties support climate policies in the abstract more than in the here and now.

In tandem with that there is also evidence of a recoil among some sections of the electorate to the Greens, blaming them for policies that have kept energy prices high, and that have impacted on commuters and workers who are reliant on private transport.

However, the problem for the Greens could be as simple as the problem that faced Labour and the PDs before, that the smaller party in government becomes its mudguard.

With parties of the left and centre-left there is an ideological quandary when they go into coalition with a party of the centre or of the centre-right. For some supporters it is mixing oil and water. The direction and outlook of the administration will be shaped by the bigger party, and supporters of the smaller party will view the compromise of its values to be too big or even a betrayal. That was a huge issue for Labour in 2016, one from which it is only recovering now.

In addition, a centre-left party will be a honeypot for transfers. But only in opposition. Coming out of government it becomes toxic. In the few constituencies where Greens were ahead of the Social Democrats and Labour in counts, their candidates picked up few transfers. In Waterford Marc Ó Cathasaigh received less than 300 transfers from Labour’s Sadhbh O’Neill, herself until recently a senior Green Party figure.

Unlike other smaller parties the Green will survive. If there is any consolation it has – unlike 2011 – secured more than 2 per cent of the national vote which will entitle the party to receive State funding.