Forty years a growing

Let's take a moment to look back. 

 In 1982 I was a teenager, and I read a column by Michael Viney in the Irish Times where he talked about:
“A storehouse economy, non-exploitative approach to nature, land reform, human-scale institutions, alternative technology, a basic, unearned income for all, and the decentralisation of political power.”        

That column led to me joining the Green Party, and attending the first Convention in the Glencree Reconciliation Centre where we agreed our founding principles forty years ago. . My memories of the early days included Esperanto, Basic Income, Acid Rain, our cold damp office on Stephen Street, and then Fownes Street. I remember canvassing for Liam de Siún in Bray in the early 1980s. Back then people left their front door key in the lock on the outside of the front door. Times have changed! I remember Ubi Dwyer storming out of our first convention in Glencree  because some of us had driven there; Maire Mullarney on the Late Late Show, extolling home schooling; Roger Garland keeping Ireland open, and having rows with rural Fianna Fáil TDs; Patricia McKenna annoying the establishment; John Gormley criticising Bertie Ahern on his use of the Government Jet. We still have rows, with others and within!

On reflection I feel we spent too much time railing about what we were against, rather than promoting what we were in favour of. People need a vision to believe in, as well as problems to oppose. So let’s look ahead:

We need to be more propositional, rather than oppositional. We need to get out of our comfort zone, rather than cherish the comfort of like-minded people. We need to check our privilege, and remember that Ireland is one of the wealthiest nations

There’s a few awkward truths we also need to confront. Covid vaccinations rely on the extraordinary advances of modern medicine. Nuclear energy is keeping the lights on in France and other countries. Ukrainians want weapons to fight an evil invasion

I don’t want to suggest that we need to drop our commitments to preventative healthcare, to clean energy, or to peace, but we must accept that what we hold dear is not necessarily held dear by others and we must respect that.  Looking ahead: We need to be a stronger voice for women, for children, for minorities, for marginalised communities and for those less privileged than ourselves. We must be  known for our leadership and vision, rather than our dissent.

We should look to our German, our Austrian, Finnish and Swedish colleagues. We should listen to the concerns of young people advocating change. We need to seek out, listen to, and learn from dissenting voices.

We must work across political divides. It is what I learnt from the Council chamber, but it took me 20 years to learn how to do so. That’s what I now do every day in the European parliament in order to achieve success.

To succeed in the next 40 years we need a better gender balance. We need to be more inclusive of all communities, and I applaud the work of Roderic O’Gorman  and Joe O’Brien  on this. We need more coherent economic and social narratives. Sure, we favour basic income, but then what? We need to have more to say about big data (thanks Ossian), and small businesses, about start-ups and innovation. We need to have more to say about cities, and about towns, and Malcolm Noonan and others are making this happen

To suggest 40 years ago that there were natural limits that we had to live within was radical. It is now generally accepted. What we then called alternative energy is now mainstream. The European Green Deal has been endorsed by the vast majority of European public representatives, and this is what Grace O’Sullivan and I are legislating for in Brussels.

In 1990 John Gormley published a Green Guide for Ireland. He asked whether being green would involve a return to a harsh and spartan existence. In reply he wrote that “We are at a stage of human development where we can combine the technology of the new with the wisdom of the old to make for a better world.” John’s words were prescient then and are relevant now.

Over the next forty years we must change. We require a relationship to the land that replenishes and rejuvenates the soil. We must produce, store and utilise clean energy for everything that we do. We must retrofit our homes to be powerhouses that keep us safe and secure. Our neighbourhoods must be safe and easy to get around for the young and not so young. We must reclaim our streets from the tyranny of car dominance and allow public space, and life to flourish. We must cherish biodiversity, and work with all on protecting our climate. Back then we said that the poverty of two-thirds of the world’s family demands a redistribution of the world’s resources. This is still the case.

Friends, today’s challenges demand cooperation across borders. There are enormous challenges ahead. We know that the challenges of globalisation, of migration, of climate, of Covid, of peace demand cooperation and coordination across the globe. They cannot be solved by the nation-state alone. The green message is a clear one. To take care of this fragile and precious earth we must work as one.

Fail Better

"All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs." 

The lines came from Enoch Powell, and it wasn’t his rather chequered political career he was referring to, but that of Joseph Chamberlain, a British statesmen who wonderfully once campaigned on the slogan ‘three acres and a cow’ to capture the agriculture vote. His son Neville became Prime Minister and perhaps lived up to Enoch’s assessment of his father, given that he sought to appease Hitler in the 1930s.

Politics is an unusual calling. We outbid our opponents in promises to voters, and ultimately disappoint our electorate when we do not deliver all we stood for. If we do not make promises, we are ignored, and so we walk a path between rhetoric and reality. We campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Ultimately, we can never deliver on all we set out to achieve. In the parallel universe of academia, propositions must be evidence-based, and better still published in peer-reviewed journals before they are accepted. In politics, we rely on the electorate, and the fourth estate to capture the essence of our ideas, and achievements, or lack of them. Even though our ideas and policies are grounded in evidence, their implementation relies on the goodwill of the electorate. Implementation of our entire Manifesto can never be achieved.

Back when I was on Dublin City Council, Councillor Andrew Montague told me that all you ever get in politics is incremental change. Over time though, he went on to say, it adds up. You think you are achieving almost nothing and then, as the years pass you realise that the world has changed, and you played a part in making it happen.  Back in the 1980s a group of us campaigned for light rail as an alternative to road building in Dublin. Our button badges read ‘trams not jams’. Decision-makers laughed at us and accused us of being stuck in the past. In 1991, in my first term on Dublin City Council I worked with other councillors to promote public transport investment rather than roads. Over twenty years later I took my place on the first tram leaving Stephen’s Green. Subsequently, we launched a ‘Join the Dots’ postcard campaign to link the red and green lines, and that took a decade to happen, with opposition from vested interests who felt the car should still be king. When I entered local government the city centre population was declining, and we feared Dublin would become a ‘doughnut city’ with a hollowed-out centre. The ‘Living City’ movement led by the late Deirdre Kelly turned the tide and paved the way for policies that allowed the inner city to double in population. Ideas take time to take root and grow. In the 1980s the Green Party campaigned for a Basic Income, and an end to smoky coal. The draft Programme proposes a National Clean Air Strategy, and a Basic Income trial. The steps to implementation are agonisingly slow.

Thirteen years ago, I met a few pals in the Stag’s Head pub and discussed whether the Greens should enter Government. There was heated debate and no clear consensus. In these COVID days of back-to-back Zoom calls there hasn’t been the chance to catch up with my mates, and a pint in the pub is a distant memory. The question remains: should we enter Government or offer advice from the side-line. The draft Government Programme is in sections visionary, but in other parts downright irritating. It proposes a marriage of convenience between three parties that are far from aligned in history or ideology. It is a tough read, all too often opts for studies, reviews and reports rather than action. It fails to grasp the nettle of Seanad reform, and does not recognise the severity of the housing and homeless crisis, and yet…

The Programme seeks to end Direct Provision by 2025; it allocates extraordinary funding to active travel and public transport and proposes to retrofit 500,000 homes by 2030. On housing it offers 50,000 social homes, and a Housing First approach to homelessness. It intends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% within a decade. None of these gains will happen overnight, and it will take time to ramp up our efforts.

And the planet continues to burn. Global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were 386 parts per million back in 2007. The number is 413 today. Since we met for a drink thirteen years ago almost 400 billion tonnes of CO2 have been added to global emissions. It is as clear that we need to act, with an urgency lacking in the major parties. We cannot state that we have a decade to save the earth and then suggest that we sit this one out until the time is right. Meanwhile in the European Parliament we’re adopting a European Green Deal and a Just Transition for regions moving to a low-carbon economy. We can do that here at home. With twelve TDs we cannot dictate policy in every aspect of the new Government's work, but we can sow seeds that will grow over time.

Being in Government from 2007 to 2011 was hard. It may be even tougher now. No-one knows how long the COVID-19 pandemic will last, or its long-term impact on our economy that is highly dependent on exports and tourism. If we do enter Government, it will be a tough and demanding job. A decade after we were spat out, I believe we should enter Government again, and play our part in tackling the immense challenges that lie ahead. The road ahead is a tough one, and there will be failures as well as gains. We will never realise all that we wish to achieve, and regardless of the outcome, there will always be naysayers suggesting that we have achieved nothing. The issues are urgent, we cannot wait. I believe we should enter Government.

 Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Time to move on from the Croke Park Agreement

I’m now the Green Party’s spokesperson on Public Expenditure and Reform. Here’s what I had to say at our Press Conference in Buswell's Hotel on the first anniversary of the Fine Gael - Labour Government being formed.


The one area where the Labour Party is in control is in the management of the public service, but what real reform have we seen there in the last year? The response to the crisis seems to be to make cuts across the board, rather than prioritising spending in some areas and changing work practices in other areas, to make the same overall saving.  Such an approach might encounter greater resistance from particular vested interests but this is a time for taking courageous decisions.  If the Government can explain and justify why they are doing it I think they will even get certain opposition support, including our own.  


It is time to move on from the Croke Park Agreement. The Public Service Agreement 2010-2014 was a cautious document that failed to grasp the nettle of institutional reform.

Rather than relying exclusively on a voluntary redundancy scheme, why did they not tell the small number of people who are not able to do their jobs, that they would have to be among the ones to go?  Public Servants must be promoted on merit, not seniority.  Performance must be better measured, competence rewarded and under-performance penalised. Michael Bloomberg mayor of New York said: “If you can't measure it, you can't manage it” Mandatory redundancy is better for the State, better for the tax-payer and better for the individual.

 The culture of mediocrity is some of our public services has to go. Automatic pay increments must also be reconsidered, and  root and branch reform of productivity and performance in the public sector is now required. It doesn’t automatically follow that someone is better at their job after doing it for fifteen years. I suspect that in may instances the reverse is true. We need innovation, new ideas and out of the box thinking. That can be difficult if you’ve been working from the same cubicle for a decade or more. I’m delighted that the new Secretary General in Finance ran juice-bars in the south of France, we need more of that kind of background and experience.

Why does it still have to take an age to move people across departments and agencies, to the shore up the critical areas where we need them most?" There needs to be greater horizontal movement of staff between Government Departments and between the Civil Service and other State agencies.

This is a hard time to be in Government, but also a good time to be a Minister.  You have a unique chance to show you can manage your department well, using limited resources to still achieve great effect.  I don't know what the Taoiseach's Ministerial score card looks like, but at the end of the first year, I am not sure any of them can be sure of an honours grade.

Rebuilding and Renewal

Where to begin?

We ran, we lost, and the rebuilding must now begin. Three months later I’m only just realising the pressure that we were all operating under for the last few years. It was difficult enough as a TD and as a Minister of State. I can only imagine what it was like for Eamon and John sitting at the Cabinet table.

There were also enormous pressures on our Oireachtas and head office staff who now find themselves out of work. Still, I’m relatively optimistic about the prospects for the Party in the longer term. We’ve always prided ourselves on the strong voluntary ethos of the Party. Now that will be put to the test.

There’s a great opportunity now to start afresh, with the benefit of our experience from the last thirty years, and from our four years in Government. While many of our current policies are detailed and carefully considered, they are of an era that preceded the Financial Crisis. Now we need to wipe the slate clean of policies and start afresh with just our seven principles to guide us. New policies must be crisp, clear and written in plain English. Our experience allows us to produce distinct policies that can be readily implemented the next time we’re in Government. We now need to show that we can do more with less, and ensure that the vulnerable will benefit from any changes that we propose. Environmental charges make sense, but not the flat charges for water and property that Phil Hogan appears to be currently pursuing.

The Green Party reformed planning and energy policy and has the potential to achieve so much more. We were on the cusp of changing the way politics is funded, about to restructure local government and provide a directly elected mayor for Dublin. All of that preparation can and will continue.

The Party now needs to appoint bright young voices as well as the voices of experience to speak for us. We have the luxury of time on our side to regroup before the next significant elections in three years time. We must reach out to campaigners who are fighting for causes that we’re only just beginning to understand. We can borrow from the campaigning methods of the Facebook and Twitter revolutions in the Middle East, but we must also learn from the way the GAA is grounded in our communities. We need to call up new members once they’ve joined, meet them for a coffee, and get them working on worthwhile projects. These are challenges for our new leader and a new National Executive.

I’ll still licking my wounds from electoral defeat, but I’m proud of what we achieved despite the economic tsunami that we had to deal with in Government. I’m staying involved, but I’m certainly enjoying the work life balance that I’ve discovered after twenty years as an elected representative for the Party.

Why Postcodes will provide joined-up Government

I had a natter yesterday on the Last Word with Matt Cooper on TodayFM about postcodes. 

Liz McManus from the Labour Party was on with me, and to put it frankly I was gob-smacked that she and her party are currently opposing the introduction of postcodes.

Postcodes (sometimes known as location codes) are a way of making it easier and quicker for post to get delivered. They also function as location codes that will allow us to better plan for services in the future whether it’s new schools or health services.

They will save lives by ensuring that emergency services can pinpoint a specific address. John Kidd of National fulltime Fire-fighters, SIPTU said:
 “It is no exaggeration to say lives will be saved”.

Dozens of street names are duplicated in Dublin, and even a moment’s confusion in despatching an ambulance can make the crucial difference. There’s a Quarry Road in Shankill, as well as one in Cabra. There’s also a Pembroke Lane in Dublin 2 as well as Dublin 4. I know this because I remember my sister telling me about the Guards battering down the door of one of her neighbours looking for a drug dealer a few years ago. The unfortunate women had to inform them that there were two Pembroke Lanes before they stopped attacking her front door with a sledgehammer.

There’s a Ballybeg in Antrim, Carlow, Down, Waterford and one in Wicklow. I’ve no idea how many ‘Old Bog Roads’ we have in Ireland but chances are that more than one or two squad cars, ambulances or letters have gone to the wrong one because we don’t have a postcode system.

Postcodes will make it easier to provide joined up government. It’ll make it easier for the Central Statistics Office to allow census data to be analysed and correlated to information held by the Department of Health, Education or the Revenue Commissioners. This will allow us to to better plan for school numbers or health facilities. The Geodirectory database developed by An Post and the Ordnance Survey is a good step in the right direction to providing postcodes in Ireland, but it needs to go further in order to allow the public, businesses and semi-state agencies to take full advantage of the benefits.

You won’t lose your old address. That’ll still be used in mailing. You’ll still be able to put Dublin 4, or 14 on an envelope, but it may also come with something along the lines of D04 123 or D14 567 to better pinpoint your position. Satnavs will operate better, and so will home delivery. Some companies have come up with good ideas for postcodes already.

I’ve been posting out 35,000 newsletters every six months or so for the last eight years. An Post as far as I know still can’t allow me the option of sending them only to constituents in the Dún Laoghaire Dáil constituency. With postcodes accurately determining the boundaries, this type of delivery will be a piece of cake. Of course direct marketing companies will be rubbing their hands with glee, but if it is done correctly it will be possible to opt out of corporate direct mailings from the An Post database. Sure, it will open up the market, but that creates opportunities as well as challenges for An Post and others. I’d say it’ll create and protect jobs. It will take us finally into the 20th, if not the 21st century.

If data protection Issues can be successfully resolved, and I don’t see why they can’t,  it’ll allow us to burrow down into data that is lost by the law of large numbers. 

-Has access to third level really increased over the last decade for people in disadvantaged areas, or do the statistics simply show that there was an influx of graduates into a gentrifying neighbourhood? 

-Is there a cancer cluster of statistical significance beside an old landfill site? 

Location codes will allow us to answer these questions. 

Of course you can still do much of this number crunching with existing data, but it’s difficult to correlate information for the Bray Road, or Main Street,  or Blackrock Stradbrook to other data. Postcodes  will provide the matrix or the glue that will allow for better government to happen overnight.

The majority of countries have post codes. Afghanistan doesn’t, Angola doesn’t, and I thought Albania didn’t but Wikipedia tells me it now does. 117 of the 190 member countries of the Universal Postal Union have postal code systems. In Canada even Santa Claus’s factory at the North Pole has a postcode. It’s HOH OHO of course.

As far as I can see we are the last country in the EU without a publicly accessible postcode system. Liz McManus feels it may cost up to €50 million to introduce. I suspect the costs will be closer to €15 million, and that the money will be recouped quickly through efficiencies in the delivery of services.

This is a modernising initiative, and is long overdue. The days of old-style protectionism are over. I fully support this initiative.

Driving to drink

There's no getting away from alcohol in Ireland.

The pic shows a two and a half storey high ad for Jameson whiskey facing a local authority flat block in the centre of Dublin. In other parts of the city alcohol advertising is even more pervasive. The controversial JCDecaux billboards that went up earlier this year target drivers and are dominated by ads for Heineken and Southern Comfort, and in recent weeks lamp-posts in town were draped in banners announcing Guinness's 250th anniversary. Some days the smell of fermenting hops from St. James's Gate even reaches as far as Kildare Street.

Wasn't it Diageo that found themselves in difficulty a few years ago when they started giving away tricolours with a pint of plain plonked in the centre of the flag? That company sends Oireachtas members an occasional newsletter celebrating their alcohol products, and take care in ensuring that public representatives know about their tips for responsible drinking through sites such as DrinkIQ and MEAS -the 'Mature Enjoyment of Alcohol in Society'. Worthy though those initiatives are, I suspect their total budget is less than 1% of what the drink industry spends on advertising their products. The Licensed Vitners also sends an invitation every Christmas to their annual knees-up for TDs and Senators, but so far I haven't taken them up on their drinks offer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fond of a drink myself, but I do think we need to move alcohol away from centre-stage. I don't think alcohol should be tied into sports sponsorship - I'd much prefer if such funding came from general taxation.

Drink driving has hit the headlines in the last few days, with Noel Dempsey's proposal to reduce legal blood alcohol limits to the norm in other European Counties. The rate is proposed to come down from 0.08 blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.05 BAC for most drivers, and 0.02 BAC for professional drivers, learner drivers, and for the first two years after you've passed your driving test.

Apparently Fianna Fáil's Parliamentary Party had an animated discussion of the issue last night with a fair amount of support for maintaining the status quo. I can understand that feelings run high on this issue. There's even one or two Green Party members in Dún Laoghaire who have voiced their concern to me on the Bill, and that's in a constituency where most residents have a pub that's a short walk away. They have pointed out that we should enforce the existing laws rather than extending them, and feel that there should be a graduated system of penalty points that might start at 2 points for being slightly over the limit and extending to losing your license for much higher blood alcohol levels.

The Oireachtas is a predominantly male institution, and it tends to concentrate on very male concerns. Any proposal to cut down on drink-driving gets a chorus of male disapproval, but I don't recall hearing too many TDs talk about the need for more mini-buses to get older people (mostly women) to and from Bingo.

I haven't got too many representations from constituents on changing the law on drink driving, but I can see that for many non-Dublin TDs and Senators the issue has loomed large. I'd hope that any debate around this issue might concentrate people's minds on the need to have decent planning. This can ensure that more homes are within walking distance of the pub, -and indeed the church and school for that matter. However, if you have a laissez-faire approach to planning that allows you to build houses almost anywhere, then you shouldn't be surprised if high numbers of people are killed driving to and from the pub. Thankfully the Public Against Road Carnage (PARC) group have done much to raise awareness and tackle driving deaths on Donegal's roads, a county that has one of the highest levels of road deaths.

Road conditions, fatigue and speed also contribute to road deaths. Sgt. Colm Finn, head of the Forensic Collision Investigation Unit based at Dublin Castle, said in 2007 that the normal speed limit of 80kph is quite often too fast on rural roads in places like Donegal, and mentioned road conditions as a factor. Lowering speed limits can reduce accident rates, and has the added benefit of improving fuel consumption and lowering carbon emissions. Fatigue has also been identified as a contributing factor in road deaths.

There's a lot we need to do to reduce the role of alcohol in Irish life. One of the areas where I found agreement with Michael McDowell was on the issue of small café-bars that could counter-act the rise of the super-pub, but even his limited proposals were easily defeated by the drinks lobby. Eamon Ryan in his role as Minister for Communications and Mary Harney as Minister for Health are working on measures to further tighten and refine existing codes to protect the nation’s health from excessive alcohol advertising. I'd be happier if they completely banned alcohol advertising and sponsorship, and put a health warning on the label. I don't believe that the voluntary codes are working. As least we now have random breath testing, which is a step in the right direction. Dr. Gerry Hickey from Alcohol Response Ireland has done good work on raising public awareness of problem drinking and is well aware from his own work of the damage that alcohol can cause.

As I write it seems that the Taoiseach has kicked the issue into touch, saying that any change might have to be looked at in a cross-border context. That will probably remove any imminent threat of revolt from the back-benches. Personally I'd favour the proposed reduction, and I suspect that we'll return to the issue early in the new year, if not before. The UK and Ireland are out of step with the rest of Europe, and I'd like to see the limits lowered.

Deireadh seachtaine maith

"Deireadh seachtaine maith?" asked the teacher as I dropped the kids into school this morning. "Go h-an mhaith!" I replied.

Looking back, there were five intense challenges over the last ten days, and we got through them all. The Lisbon vote was followed by the hiatus over the Ceann Comhairle, then came the final hours of the Programme for Government negotiation on Thursday evening and approval from the Reference Group, followed by the two crucial votes of Green Party members on Saturday - one on the Programme itself, and then one on NAMA. We got through them all.

I took this pic just after 8.30pm on Friday evening. At that stage the Green Party Reference Group and our negotiators were holed up on the third floor of Agriculture House. Mary White is in the foreground and to her left are John Gormley, Colm O Caomhanaigh, Cllr. Mark Deary, Paul Gogarty, Elizabeth Davidson, Cllr. Vincent P Martin, Roderick O'Gorman, Dan Boyle, Trevor Sargent, Andrew Murphy, Trish Forde-Brennan, Stiofain Nutty and Damian Connon. John Downing's reflection is in the window and Eamon Ryan is just out of shot. It was a crucial moment, did we have a deal or not? John Downing was counting down the minutes to the news, yet we knew that crucial parts of the small print had not been signed off on. Like any agreement there has to be trust, and we went with the line that the deal was done in time for the 9 o'clock news.

The line by line work went on until ten. At that stage the Oireachtas staff were locking us out of the third floor and we had to go up to the fifth floor to continue till near midnight in a Department of Agriculture Conference Room that Trevor allowed us to use. Stiofain then took our edits back to Government Buildings where Noel Dempsey and Eamon Ryan worked with their teams till after 7.30 am. By the end of the night Fianna Fáil and the Green Party were eventually working off a single PC on the master copy. That was followed by a logistical nightmare of trying to print 20,000 pages by 10am. Copiers in Government Buildings and Leinster House were cranked up, and someone from John Gormley's office headed down to Reads and took over four copiers. There was even someone sent out to Stillorgan to a copy shop. That's why the documentation was delayed in getting to the Convention in the RDS until after 11am. Never again! The Programme was given first directly to the members so that they could see it first-hand, rather than through the media lens. The Sunday Tribune carried criticism from eco-socialists saying we had sold out, while the Irish edition of the Sunday Times led with the line that new taxes were on the way. I guess if you're getting equal and opposite criticism when you're in Government you're probably doing OK.

Look, let's have no illusions about it all. There is an avalanche coming down the hill in the December Budget. We have committed to cut €4 billion off current spending next year, the year after and the year after that. The next few years will be tough, and as the man with the green mohawk put it: "I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

Interesting to think that facing across the table from each other at the negotiations were a business women, a former businessman and former Community Youth Worker from the Greens; and two former teachers and a lawyer from Fianna Fáil. They were well matched.

The Programme is transformational and here's a few highlights:

-we're establishing a €100m Enterprise Stabilization Fund and €200m Green Fund in AIB and BOI as well as a deposit account that will be ring-fenced for lending to Green projects. Recommendations from the Farmleigh Global Irish Forum will be implemented, as well as continuing the work laid out in the 'Building Ireland's Smart Economy' Framework;

-promotions within the Public Service will be on the basis of merit, eliminating seniority as a determining factor in public appointments. Senior appointments from Principal Officer upwards will be open to applicants from the the private and other sectors, and someone from outside the Civil Service will chair the Top Level Appointments Committee;

-limiting restrict direct political donations to political parties or candidates to individual Irish citizens and residents only and facilitate a system where donations from private bodies, including businesses and corporations, can be made to a political fund which will be distributed to political parties in accordance with their electoral performance in the previous Dáil election;

-reforming the system of expenses for members of the Oireachtas to ensure the system is transparent, vouched and open to scrutiny, including the regular publication of such expenses. This system will be verified and verifiable;

-reforming local government in Ireland to strengthen the strategic role and function of regional authorities in planning, transport, water and waste management;

-moving from taxes on labour to taxes on resources. That will include site value taxation, a carbon levy and charging for treated water, with a free basic allowance;

-spending twice as much in future on public transport projects as on roads;

-an end to stag hunting and fur farming, and the adoption of the principles and 5 freedoms set out in the Scottish Animal Health and Welfare Act;

-a Climate Change bill that will give a statutory basis to the annual carbon budget to reduce emissions by 3%;

-honouring the commitments to our children given in our 2007 Manifesto with good news on class sizes; Capitation Grants, no third level fees and a referendum on children's rights.

Sure, I'd like to see firmer time-lines and detailed costings, but often political documents are more poetry than prose. The budget will make the costings clearer. Changes in demarcation and work practices can save billions. I think it is a decent Programme, and given that we've implemented half of the original Programme for Government from when the Government was formed over two years ago, I think we should do fine.

October's been a pretty crazy month so far. Let's see how things fare between now and Christmas. As the introduction to the new Programme states:
"Teastaíonn spiorad an Mheitheal anois níos mó ná riamh. Spiorad an chomharsanacht, spiorad an chomhoibriú."

Eleventh Hour

It's late, and I'm tired.

It's been a tough year for the Country, for the Government and for the Green Party.

This week has been one of the most difficult I've faced in my 27 years in the Party. If we don't conclude talks tomorrow morning with Fianna Fáil on transforming the Programme for Government we walk.

I was on Late Date on RTE Radio One earlier this evening saying all of this. It was curiously cathartic to talk about how I felt and outline where things are at. Our team -Mary White TD, Minister Eamon Ryan and Senator Dan Boyle, have had over forty hours of talks over the last eight days with Ministers Dermot Ahern, Mary Hanafin and Noel Dempsey. I don't know if we can reach agreement. From the start we've been emphasising jobs, political reform and eduction as being key areas where we need to transform this government. There's been progress, but the clock is ticking.

Our membership have called a special convention this Saturday in the RDS in Dublin to decide whether or not we stay in government, and whether or not to support the NAMA legislation. We require a two-thirds majority to stay in government. A motion to vote down NAMA and end our participation in government would also require a two thirds vote. The bar is set high to stay. This will be the fifth time this year that members have met to discuss crucial issues for the Party.

The strains and stress take their toll. At a personal level its becoming increasingly difficult to manage the huge demands that are being made on all of us. There's a balance that has to be struck between family life, responsibilities to the constituency, to the Green Party, and to Government. You can never get it all right, but between the normal demands of a Dáil constituency, the responsibilities to attendance and participation in Dáil committees and votes, and the concerns of the Party it can be a mountain to climb. Oh, and I left out the work life-balance part.

I'm trying to be fairly philosophical about it all, but it's not easy. I really believe that green ideas are crucial to getting us through the current economic and environmental challenges. We've got to move Ireland from the boom-bust buildings and big cars fixation into an Ireland that's better planned with a more diversified economy. It'll involve green jobs - in the digital economy, agriculture, renewable energy, sustainable construction and smarter travel. It will be based on confidence in the political system, investment in education and proper planning. There has to be a move to resource taxes, and away from taxes on labour. I believe the Green Party is best placed to help guide, lead and transform politics through the tough decisions that lie ahead for several years to come.

I met someone from the Labour Party today. She talked about how necessary it is to have Green Party as a force in Irish politics, to tackle energy and climate change issues. I also bumped into a Fianna Fáil back-bencher who spoke in desperation about the need to be relieved from the necessity of almost daily funeral attendances of constituents to allow him to concentrate on policy and legislation. The political system requires systemic reforms.

There's a yearning for so many of the ideas that the Green Party brings to the table, whether it be on environment challenges, local government reform, or matters as simple as Safe Routes to School. Its a tough, tough time to be in Government. The John O'Donoghue issue was the straw that almost broke the camel's back for the Greens. I'm hoping that it will act as a catalyst for all of us to reform, and transform the politics of business as usual.

Politics is never easy. I remember having intense debates and rows twenty-five years ago about whether the Greens should be a campaigning NGO or actually contest elections. We chose the latter, and entered a world that is rarely black or white, and that has many shades of grey. Looking back, I think that was the right choice.

I've been on the phone a lot in the past few days talking with Party members. I'm telling them that if we do get a deal that transforms the Programme for Government, then we'll put it to our members on Saturday and ask them for supoport. I'm saying that the NAMA vote is a tough one, but that we have got changes in the Bill, and there are more to come, and that on balance I believe it is the best option to deal with a banking crisis that was not of our making.

A lot depends on what happens over the next 12, and perhaps 48 hours. I'll try and keep you posted.

Sound the Alarm

On climate change, that is.

I know, I'm becoming a climate change bore, but mark Saturday 8th December in your Diary. There's a public PARADE FOR THE PLANET for action on climate change from the amphitheatre at Dublin’s Civic Offices to the Custom House at 1pm. It's great to see all the Development Aid NGOs as well as Environmental NGOs involved.

December 8th marks the GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE. As the Bali talks on climate change proceed, ordinary people around the world will be finding different ways of sounding the alarm on climate change so their politicians wake up and do much more about it.

Stop Climate Chaos is hosting a PARADE FOR THE PLANET which will see supporters making their own carbon-neutral way along the route, by foot, bike, skateboard and buggy, ringing bells and blowing whistles to SOUND THE ALARM FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE!

No, I'm not heading to Bali, I figure I've a fair understanding of the science, and the politics of it all at this stage, and I haven't figured out a quick low-carbon route. I'll leave it to John Gormley, and his delegation to beat the drum for Ireland.

I was lucky enough to get along to the Al Gore gig at the RCSI on Saturday. The great man seemed a tad jowly, and not having seen him live before, I wouldn't have an opinion on whether he's running next year. I'll leave that to others. It was an interesting event, Eamon Ryan was as evangelical as always, and even Willie Walsh from British Airways agreed that we need to include global aviation emissions in the post-Kyoto climate agreement.

Al quoted an old African proverb that loosely stated that if you want go quickly, go alone, but if you want to go far, go with others. That's not a bad analogy for the Greens in Government, come to think of it. He said the problem of climate change is that we need to go far, quickly. That's the challenge.

He was an inspirational speaker, talking without notes or even a single power-pointed polar bear. He also sounded the alarm bells, mentioning recent research which suggests that the polar ice caps could melt fully in around 22 years time, or as little as 7 years.

The questioners afterwards were to polite to ask him about his rather large home, back in Tennessee. He ended by urging us to live our lives in a way that reflects well on the source of all life, and suggesting that more of the 'peace-force' or 'Satyagraha' is required. I'm not quite sure what the employees of Merrion Capital who hosted the event made of that.

Let's mobilise the peace forces. Bring along your whistles to Dublin's Civic Offices next Saturday 8th December 2008 at 1 pm.