The following year Die Gr�nen won 27 seats in the Bundestag, making them the "rst green parliamentary group in the world.

�In the summer of 1987, Mike Scott and Steve Wickham of The Waterboys called into the old Green Party of"ces in Temple Bar to express their concern about the unprecedented number of "sh kills in Irish rivers that year. John Gormley later got a phone call from founding party member Tommy Simpson, who did not know the who's who of the rock world, to say that a Mick Jagger lookalike from a group called the "Waterbabies" had been in the of"ce.

A week later, Gormley spotted Scott in a caf� in Ranelagh and asked if the Waterboys would do a gig for the Greens. They agreed immediately and the concert took place in the Olympic Ballroom. Steve Averill, famous for his designs of a number of early U2 album covers, designed posters and billboards for the Greens' Waterboys gig.

�If the Greens did go into government with Fianna F�il this week, they would become the "rst all-Ireland party to go into government in Dublin. The Green Party became the only party after Sinn F�in to organise on an all-Ireland basis after a special party convention in February 2005.

The Green Party of Northern Ireland is a regional council of the all-Ireland Green Party and had one MLA, Brian Wilson from North Down, elected in the recent northern elections.

�The Green Party was founded as the Ecology Party of Ireland in 1981 by Dublin teacher Christopher Fettes. It changed its name to the Green Alliance in 1983 and in 1987 was given its current title.

�A poster for the inaugural party gathering on 3 December 1981 in the Central Hotel stated that the party was "presenting a radical alternative to both capitalism and socialism for those who favour a storehouse economy, non-exploitative approach to nature, land reform, human-scale institutions, alternative technology, a basic unearned income for all, and decentralisation of political power".

�In the early 1980s, there was a major debate among the Greens over whether candidates should have posters or not.

Candidates were allowed to put up small cardboard posters with their names, the words 'Green Alliance' and the party's logo of a tree with mountains behind.

John Gormley eventually broke the mould by placing his photograph on a poster with a planet earth behind him. His slogan was, 'Other parties promise you the sun, moon and stars; only Greens guarantee the earth'.

�The Greens recruited 750 young Greens in their last major recruitment drive last September and October. The party now has 826 young members.

�In the early years of the party it was decided that all decisions within the party would be reached by consensus. The party is said to have borrowed this form of decisionmaking from a long tradition in the Quaker community, where "forbearance, patience and tolerance characterise the decisionmaking process".

�Roger Garland was the "rst Green TD to be elected to the D�il in 1989 when he got the fourth seat in Dublin South, having stood there in successive elections from 1982 onwards. He is now chairman of the Keep Ireland Open group, which campaigns for public access to the Irish countryside.

�Green Party leader Trevor Sargent faced prison in the 1980s for not paying his TV licence as a protest against the dearth of Irish programmes on RTE. In 2004, the refusal of RTE to grant live coverage to the party's ardfheis in Ennis - as it did not have seven TDs - led to the Green Party pursuing a case in the High Court against RTE. The Greens argued that they were entitled to TV coverage as they had six TDs and two MEPs.

RTE subsequently decided to afford live coverage to the ardfheis.