The question is often asked, ‘should the Green Party be in Government now?’. The question should be, ‘is it a place FF want to be?’. Ireland is at a critical juncture and the Greens are in a position to demand the implementation of  measures required to influence the establishment of sound fundamentals to Irish electoral, financial  planning and ethical
structures. However, can our FF partners  accept the change that  is necessary and the unknown political consequences of this?. I know the Green party is
prepared to implement that change regardless of the political consequences
or our popularity ratings in the opinion polls. We were never popular and
we are less so now. Taking account of the common good of current and future
generations is never a politically rewarding exercise, just ask Alan Dukes.

The road map establishing measures required have been outlined in countless
reports from the commission on taxation. - McCarthy, Indecon, Barrington  and
the 1973 Kenny report. ( aspects of this report may need to be revisited due
to age)  All other political parties have failed to implement Kenny, despite
the necessity of so doing.

We as a small, policy orientated, political party should use our  position
to push our political partners down the route this state has failed to take
in the past. We should not be afraid to push. There is an opinion that one
way or the other the Green Party is ‘on a hiding to nothing’. This opinion
could be, in part, correct due to the experience of the Local Elections where
the electorate gave the Government parties a slap and the Greens took the
heaviest  hit. As a smaller mass we cannot absorb the impact.  The
experience of a general election may be the same, so let us do what we can
before the possibility of our political oblivion is realised.  

The authority and mandate of this Government to introduce the measures
required to correct national finances and the banking sector may be open to
question . However,  the political posturing and  opportunistic tabloid
positions taken by political parties and opinion makers over the last number
of  weeks is an indication of the debate that would take place during a
general election campaign. This is no doubt the approach these parties would
take during any general election campaign.

It is now clear to me that a general election would solve nothing, lead to
more confusion, false promises and the general appeasement of various
interest groups due to the parochial and clientelist nature of the Irish
political process. The focus, media and  otherwise should not be on whether
the Greens walk from government but on FF shirking doing what is right and
supporting the measures the Green Party are prepared to support and once and
for all put the Governance of this state on the right track. Any FF
capitulation on this would require them to leave Government. This would
spark a general election that the reputation of this country can ill afford
(a political basket case as well as an economic basket case)

There is a feeling in the Greens that we are losing substantial ground  by
not being able to pander to the ‘born againsts’. We shouldn't worry about
this. The ‘born againsts’ have found new best  friends in groups like the
People before Profit whatchamacallit and Joe Horrified Higgins. They are
happy because they will never be in a position to implement anything  only
bemoan those that are and do a bit of  protesting to fill the time between
finding  new reasons to be horrified. At the moment it's Lisbon, in a few
weeks time it will be something else.

The redrafting of the proposals on NAMA are only part of the demands that we
should seek from our government partners. The NAMA Legislation only deals
with consequence of the wild west that was, or perhaps still is the Irish
banking sector  The lawlessness of this wild west, presided over by our
senior government partner,  made worse by the Dodge city Planning and zoning
decisions around the country. We possibly have the opportunity to set it
right. I don't conceive that we will be thanked for it by the electorate. If
the majority party of government fail to grasp the nettle bouquet we offer
them, then it is they who will make the decision about the future of this
government and this country. We should be prepared to take the hard
decisions securing the future of this country and any party that fails to do
so should not be in government.

Every second person is an economist at the moment. The cascade of different
views, opinion, sentiment and belief, rational and otherwise in circulation
on  the problems with our economy / financial institutions and the measures
required to deal with the  consequence of those problems is leading to a
robust , if perhaps  confusing debate among those interested enough to care
.The  membership of the Green party and its core voters are extremely
interested in how the Irish economy / financial institutions  developed
into such a mess and what is required to correct this mess. It has to be
recognised that among our core voters there is and, always have been, a
generally negative view of the financial and banking sector .This negative
view varies  from distrust, through to dislike, to naked hatred . The
cause of this negativity can be from personal experience, but mainly stems
from an understanding that the nature of finance/ money/ debt / lending  /
profit / wealth creation has been cited in less than positive terms  by the
sources that green party people listen to. These "Sources" have pointed to
the global and national financial and banking structure  as being part of,
if not the  fundamental cause, of  many  problems local and global on issues
of environmental and social sustainability.  The current mess in the Irish
economy is giving validity to that understanding. Green economists in
Ireland  such as Richard Douthwaite have argued that  "a radical
restructuring of the way money is created will be required to get us out of
our problems" and did predict that the end of the Celtic Tiger would not be
pretty (http://www.sustainability.ie/debt.pdf) . What is particularly
worrying is the current assessment by Douthwaite on the future of the Irish
property sector (Construct Ireland Vol 8 issue 4).  I don't know if Richard
Douthwaite is correct or incorrect on this but he argues that the old rules
are gone and the boom to bust cycle will become a lot more frequent and
predicting stability of any duration  in property values will be very
difficult. The problem causing this, Douthwaite argues, is one that we in
the Greens have been crowing about for years, peak oil! Can we influence
the asset management legislation to consider this?

All of this discussion would be irrelevant to the Greens if we were sitting
white knuckelled and craw thumping on the opposition benches.

For the first time in our political history we are not irrelevant and we
would be foolish if we allowed that opportunity slip.

The "all things to all people approach" of FG and Labour will solve
nothing.

Fianna Fail Must Support the Greens in Government.