IT’S not easy being green, as Kermit The Frog famously sang. And it’s certainly not easy being politically green on this most emerald of isles, as Eamon Ryan knows well.
With the announcement he is to step down as Ireland’s Eco Emperor (my words, not his), it marks the end of an era for the party. In many ways, for their size, it has been a remarkably successful one.
They have survived one junior coalition partnership with Fianna Fáil during the financial crisis when Ryan struck up an extremely close relationship with the late Brian Lenihan as they plotted to move the country out of a disaster zone.
They were also in government during another crisis, this time a pandemic, when they made an unlikely pairing with the old Civil War rivals, the political equivalent of agreeing to entering into a throuple with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. And they have come out the other side, albeit with a good few bruises and some dignity lost.
You could never accuse them of running away from pressure. If the next crisis is nuclear, you’d imagine they’ll be rocking up with hazmat suits and a raft of policy and framework documents.
You cannot deny that in recent years, they have had an outsized influence on the direction of this country.
The very streets around me here in Dublin are all dug up as a new coastal cycleway is installed that will hug the sides of Dublin Bay.
Regina Doherty says they have turned Dublin ‘into a spaghetti junction of cycle lanes that have divided the city like East and West Berlin.
It’s fair to say that I haven’t been shot at yet and I’m glad that I’ll be able to take my family out for a bike ride without having to share the road with some Range Rover-driving idiot.
They have also shepherded in carbon taxes, a climate advisory council as well as a climate action plan. It is noteworthy that Ryan stood down just as the EU Nature Restoration Law was passed, which will require member states to restore 30% of habitats, including forests, grasslands, wetlands, rivers, lakes and coral beds from poor to good condition by 2030.
Even I caved this past week by getting solar installed in my old corporation house on Dublin’s northside.
Granted it’s been schorchio for the past week, but we’ve pretty much been cost neutral on our electricity since we installed them.
There is nothing more satisfying than sitting in your garden watching the app on your phone as it monitors the units you are exporting to the grid.
Saving the planet and making money. I gotta say that’s my kinda jam, but no doubt many of you find it insufferable. I see you, Michael Collins.
Wait till he hears I am literally charging the car off sunlight.
Of course, like most minority coalition partners in Ireland, they have been slapped by the electorate in recent weeks, as well as losing serious ground in Europe, where an anti-green backlash is in full swing.
Many politicians on the continent are on their bikes now with only their vegetable plots to attend to for the coming years.
And the party now faces challenging times ahead, with decisions to make about where to position themselves.
There has been a pragmatism and a common sense approach that has allowed the party to wield outsized power in recent times.
This has not gone down well with certain groups, in particular the farmers, and their difficulty finding a connection with rural Ireland is an obvious barrier to establishing a proper long-term foothold in government.
Now, it is a question of whether they can retain the pragmatic approach or be captured by the social justice warrior cohort in the party who would prefer to have them rejoin the soup of centre left underachievers.
They would do well not to forget what has brought about meaningful change during their two terms in office.
Rolling up your sleeves and making hard decisions is a habit they should not leave behind.
Now, if only the electorate would look at it that way.
Don’t annoy the Swifties
SPEAKING of small entities wielding huge power, this week Dublin is mostly in service to Taylor Swift who is now more powerful and more significant than the economy of some small countries, like Great Britain.
She comes into town in the midst of an Aer Lingus dispute that may well disappoint some fans who have travelled from very far to see her perform in the Aviva Stadium. Whatever about the Labour Court or News At One appearances, the airline and the unions should carefully consider who they are upsetting here.
They should have a long hard think about whether getting in the bad books of The Swifties is worth the hassle.
If I were them, they would know that we are all just pawns in the Taylor Swift game of world domination and they should reach a quick and amicable agreement.
Those Louth mouths
MYSELF and Fachtna, my fellow West Cork exile in Dublin, got ourselves into a bit of a tizzy of excitement and hope last weekend when we began to consider getting tickets for the potential Cork football quarter final in Croker on Sunday.
We were very quick to qualify all our texts with disclaimers like *subject to us beating Louth which, in all fairness, we should do but who the hell knows because it’s the footballers.
Anyway, our hopes were up. We were planning tickets for the hurling semi too, (which we got), and I was even planning on bringing my son to Croke Park to see if I could muster up any interest in our Gaelic sports.
But then Louth beat us. A county not exactly steeped in Gaelic football. A county whose primary export is Steve Staunton. For feck sake.
So, in a way, I’m glad I’m not bringing the young fella down there on Sunday. Why introduce that much disappointment into his diet at such a young age?
As Fachtna says, ‘it’s the hope that kills you.’
*****
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