THE Greens as political babes in the wood ready to be gobbled up by big bad Fianna Fáil? After yesterday, it might be time to revise those perceptions about ‘earnest but naive’ Greens. PR wise, the party has played a blinder. 


Of course it is possible they were nudged along with way by Fianna Fáil, the past masters at orchestrating events. Certainly the bigger coalition party were happy to play along with the perception that the Greens were putting it up to them and wringing every last possible concession from the negotiations.


But either way, from the point John Gormley sent the letter to members making it clear that if the revised programme for government failed to get the two-thirds endorsement, the Greens would pull out of government, the leadership has played its hand pretty well.


That letter, sent out a couple of weeks back, had the dual effect of making it clear to members that there would be no free pass to vote down the programme (or the Nama legislation) and sending a signal to Fianna Fáil that, if it wanted the government to survive, the new programme for government would have to contain significant concessions for the Greens.


And while there are significant omissions in the programme (crucially there is no specific promise not to cut social welfare rates), there was more than a Green tinge to the document and, as the result of last night’s vote showed, more than enough to keep members happy. The negotiation process is believed to have been torturous but that’s because behind the scenes the Greens were constantly calculating how each specific measure agreed or being fought over would fit into the goal of delivering two-thirds of the members in the RDS.


The Green negotiating team of Dan Boyle, Eamon Ryan and Mary White kept in touch throughout with a reference group of senior Greens who were based in the appropriately named ‘Green room’ in nearby Agriculture House. That group was chaired by former Green general secretary Stiofan Nutty and included the remaining members of the parliamentary party, Louth councillor Mark Deary, Carrickmacross town councillor Vincent P. Martin and the chair of the party’s policy formation body Trish Forde Brennan. They poured over the implications of each proposed measure and briefed the negotiating team on their conclusions, sometimes resulting in issues that seem to have been settled coming back under consideration. It all made for agonisingly slow progress in the talks with Fianna Fáil, but it seems as if the Greens were trying to ensure, in as much as it was possible, that every issue raised by the 600 plus members who voted yesterday would be addressed to ensure there were would be ‘something for everybody in the audience’ at the RDS.


While all that was happening, other party figures were intensively lobbying members to convince them of the merits of the deal that was being negotiated in a bid to secure their support in the crucial vote.

The deal was pretty much agreed by around 7.30pm on Friday night but presumably for media strategy reasons, the announcement was timed to coincide with the nine o’clock news on Friday night. While tv viewers switched their attention to the Late Late Show, there were further excruciating dotting of ‘i’s and crossing of ‘t’s with the agreement all through the night. Exhausted ministers didn’t begin to leave until 3 or 4am and some of those involved in the process, including transport minister Noel Dempsey, only finishing up at 8am yesterday morning.

The decision not to release the document on Friday night also showed that the Greens are getting pretty adept at playing the media game. Most of the delegates travelling to the RDS yesterday would have come by public transport where they had plenty of time to peruse the morning’s newspapers. The last thing the Green leadership needed was delegates reading analysis of what the Greens had failed to secure in the agreement. The media, being the media, would have focused on what wasn’t in the report at least as much as what was. But by holding off on publication, that exercise was impossible. Instead delegates read stories across all the dailies about how the Greens had secured a commitment not to introduce university fees (were Fianna Fáil ever going to do it anyway?) or increase pupil-teacher ratio numbers, to begin recruiting 500 teachers immediately and create 127,000 ‘green collar’ jobs. News of a commitment to ban corporate donations, introduce a system of vouched expenses for TDs and senators and look at electoral reform will have cheered travelling delegates greatly.

To be fair, the Greens did achieve a great deal in the report. There is vagueness in some areas certainly – the programme talks about “further progressive, detailed steps towards building universal health services”. And supports provided by the Film board are “to be maintained” – which still, despite media reports yesterday, seems to leave a question mark over the future of the board. And there is a serious lack of specifics in relation to the introduction of water charges – how will it be determined when households exceed their free basic allowance? And one has to be sceptical about a number of other measures ever becoming a reality. The creation of 127,000 green jobs is certainly ambitious but will it ever happen? The end of corporate donations to individual parties and politicians will be welcomed by many but there may well be constitutional issues about this measure. 


Another of the measures in the report likely to grab headlines is the move to begin a process of valuation and registration of land with a view to introducing a site valuation tax – a form of property tax based on the land rather than the actual property. However, most of the houses in urban areas are registry of deeds titles and not land registry. Changing that system to allow for a site valuation tax would presumably be a massive (and hugely expensive) logistical exercise. It’s hard to see it happening.


And it’s asking a lot for an electoral commission to look at changes to the electoral system, extending the franchise to 16-year-olds and extending the franchise for presidential elections to the Irish abroad (will Barack and Michelle Obama be entitled to vote?), when the electoral commission doesn’t even exist.


But there was enough meat in there (if that’s the right word in the context of the Greens) to more than please the party rank and file. The reforming of residency rules to ensure “those who benefit from living in Ireland are subject to taxation in Ireland”, the abolition of the PRSI ceiling, carbon taxes, the resistance to third level fees, the measures secured on education, the bank levy and the moves to end stag hunting and fur-farming are serious gains.


Nobody in the party leadership wanted yesterday’s convention to happen. The fate of the coalition hinged on the votes of a couple of hundred Green Party members and that is hardly conducive to good government. But the reality is that if this metaphorical gun wasn’t being pointed straight at the government, the Greens wouldn’t have got the deal that they did. When the Green negotiators said ‘we won’t be able to sell this to our members’, the Fianna Fáil side knew it wasn’t just brinksmanship.


A decent programme for government in the bag, the approval of the delegates obtained, yesterday was a good day for the Greens. After the luck the party has had over the past two years, it would be hard to begrudge it that.