That is where the party needs to be. The PDs, who are four years younger than the Green Party, have spent 13and-a-half years in government since 1989. Love or loathe the PDs, there is no doubting that they have shaped the policies of the country more than any other political party over the past two decades.

If the Greens want their environmental agenda to be as influential over the next decade as the PDs' fiscal rectitude and low taxation policies have been over the previous two, they need to be in government.

The Greens know that power is agonisingly close. The party has sensibly remained independent in the run-up to the general election . . . excoriating Fianna Fail, but at the same time refusing to align itself with, and at times even criticising, the potential Rainbow partners, Fine Gael and Labour.

The latter represents the favoured option for the party.

A Rainbow government would be far less unpalatable for the 'Fundis' (fundamentalists) in the party. But the increasingly savvy Greens realise that they would also be better placed to extract more from Fine Gael and Labour.

FG/Labour will need the Greens to have any chance of forming a government, whereas Fianna Fail can potentially also hook up with the PDs or Labour, if it felt that the Greens were looking for too much.

Speakers at the conference lambasted Fianna Fail as a party without vision or values and called for an end to "gombeenism". But the numbers may yet dictate that a coalition with Fianna Fail is the only way the party has to get into government. And the 'Realos' in the party know deep down that, in that eventuality, the Rubicon will have to be crossed.

Politics is ultimately about being in government and the Greens are certainly ready for government.