WHATEVER are the Greens up to? It's Fine Gael that is supposed to be the party that can't resist the kicking of sleeping dogs. But in recent weeks, the Green Party seems to be almost going out of its way to step on the tails of slumbering canines.

There was no shortage of critics back in 2007 who claimed that the Greens would prove too flaky in government. When the going got tough, they'd get going, like headless chickens, in about 20 different directions (well six, one for each TD).

But the predictions proved wide of the mark. Despite governing through the worst economic crisis in at least a generation, the Green ministers and TDs proved rock solid, showing nerve and courage to stand over a whole series of hugely unpalatable measures.

It helped, of course, that John Gormley, Eamon Ryan and company realised quickly that their Fianna Fáil cabinet colleagues didn't have two heads and eat babies for breakfast. Relations between the two parties have been harmonious.

Even when the local election results showed the party facing a potential wipe-out, the Green leadership didn't panic. The line was unwavering. "We'll continue to do the right thing by the country and try to implement Green policies. The future will take care of itself."

Despite the commentators regularly queuing up with a pre-prepared list of clichéd criticisms ("selling out", "being swallowed up by Fianna Fáil", "seduced by the trappings of office" etc), this was both principled and smart politics.

Principled because, although the Green leadership is not devoid of ego, they are in politics primarily to implement the Green politics they so passionately believe in. If they are not in government, they can't implement those policies and might never get the chance to do so.

And smart? Well, for the same reason, but also because if they pull out of government (unless it is for an extremely good reason) they face the potential elimination of the entire Green Party as a political force. How is that going to help the Green agenda?

The party's only choice is to hang in there, nail down some real Green achievements (a Dublin mayor, carbon taxes, a ban on corporate donations, education spending and so on) and hope that by the time Green TDs have to face the electorate, the economy will have picked up and they will get some credit for the tough decisions.

Its key figures know this. Yet for some reason, the party seems to have lost the plot in the past couple of weeks. The mistakes made in its handling of the Willie O'Dea affair were, on balance, understandable – it all happened so quickly and the situation was quickly rectified with minimal damage.

But after that, things started to go awry. The loss of Trevor Sargent, the party's spiritual leader, was a serious blow, but it doesn't explain the delay of senior figures in rubbishing the opposition's claims that the leak of Sargent's correspondence could have come from the top in Fianna Fáil as revenge for what happened to O'Dea. It was as daft a conspiracy theory as has ever been propagated – there was no mood for revenge in Fianna Fáil over O'Dea. And why would it do something that could potentially bring down its own government? Yet it wasn't until the following day that the Greens moved to pour cold water on it.

This delay generated suspicions that all was not well between the coalition partners. It also meant the Greens missed an obvious opportunity to have a kick back at the two main opposition parties, which were exposed by going over-the-top without a shred of evidence.

But all that was nothing compared to last week's ministerial rotation farce, which seriously undermined all the work done in building up the Greens' credibility as a party of government. The idea of rotating the ministers half way through the Dáil term was bad enough in the first place and smacked of the bad old days when the Greens thought it undemocratic to have a party leader. But to allow the issue fester to the point where it leaked into the public domain beggars belief.

Talk about providing ammunition for the opposition: "The Titanic has been hit by an iceberg and the Greens are arguing over who is sitting in the deckchairs". "There are 440,000 people on the live register but the only jobs the Greens are worried about are their own".

If they don't want the flaky charge to re-emerge or, worse, end up in the middle of an election campaign, the Green Party needs to get a grip quickly. It should start by announcing that Gormley is staying on in his position and that the party is not looking for a second junior minister.

There is no precedent or grounds for a party of six TDs having four ministers and continuing to push for it leaves the party open to the charge of jobbery.

On Tuesday, the Green Party will celebrate its 1,000th day in government. But what the party needs now is a period of calm. The parliamentary party needs to stop the navel gazing and ignore what's being written in the newspapers about it.

They need to keep their heads down (that includes decommissioning Dan Boyle's mobile phone to stop him tweeting), and get back to the job of governing.

scoleman@tribune.ie