I remember it was a balmy summer’s evening in Dublin in 2007, as the Green Party members spilled out of Dublin’s Mansion House after having taken a historic decision: they’d voted to go into government for the first time.
There was an air of giddy expectation as the Greens considered what they might be able to do once they sat around the Cabinet table with Fianna Fáil.
Those who had opposed the proposal, like former MEP Patricia McKenna, had warned the Greens would likely be chewed-up and spat-out by the now three-time taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.
Hope, however, won out over fear on that summer in Dublin.
In early 2011, with icy winds blowing and the country in the midst of an economic crisis, the Green Party lost all six of its seats in the general election.
Worse still, the Greens also fell below the 2% voting threshold to receive State funding.
I remember listening to a startling interview with Ciaran Cuffe the following day, as the now ex Dún Laoghaire TD spoke about the Green achievements in government and how the party would rise again.
He was gracious in defeat but also, somehow, impossibly positive about the future.
Cuffe contended that climate action was of such immense importance that the Greens would be back.
It was a long road. The first five years were grim as the Greens tried but failed to battle back, for example in the 2014 European Parliament elections.
Yet the hard work payed off in 2016 when Eamon Ryan and Catherine Martin won two Dáil seats.
In the 2020 General Election, an electoral green wave returned 12 Green TDs to the Dáil.
Cuffe had been proven right, although it had taken a decade.
On the first day of the new Dáil, it was clear that the Greens were determined to prove they’d learned the lessons from the past.
In his understated way, Eamon Ryan told me on the Leinster House plinth that he didn’t like talking about red lines, but taking action on climate was vital.
With Catherine Martin as the lead negotiator, the Green Party managed to weave its policy objectives right through the Programme for Government.
What’s more, Assistant Prof of Environmental Policy at UCD Cara Augustenborg estimated this year that they achieved 85% of what they promised.
Independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice said one of the reasons he wanted to form a new party, now called Independent Ireland, was to counter the effectiveness of the Green agenda.
So how come the Greens lost out so badly?
Some former supporters argue that the mammoth Planning and Development Bill fell far short of the reform which was needed.
Others claim that the government’s flirtation with moving towards Liquid Natural Gas, albeit in a limited form, was hugely detrimental.
Inside the party, they felt they were severely damaged by the findings of the Friends of the Earth survey of election manifestos which put the Greens only third on climate policy.
But the results of 2024 have done one thing: it’s disproved the notion that if the Greens negotiated a solid programme for Programme for Government, then it would secure the party’s electoral position.
Some analysts have argued that the Greens work intensely in government due to the fact that they know they are going to be wiped out come a general election.
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That wasn’t the way the party saw it.
On the way into this campaign, the Greens hoped they could hold half their Dáil seats, in part due to reasonably favourable Local Election results in Dublin.
Their share of the vote went down significantly but some of their councillors topped the poll.
However, it wasn’t to be in General Election 2024.
Maybe the general voter just associated the party with higher fuel taxes when the cost of living is so high – rather than its lofty objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Last night on RTÉ News, party leader Roderic O’Gorman spoke with the same grace in defeat as Ciaran Cuffe had done more than a decade ago.
In what sounded like an echo from the past, he added: “Those issues that focus on climate aren’t going away, and as a party, we’re not going away either.”
O’Gorman added that his party will “start the rebuild next week.”
One thing that will assist with that process is that the Green Party’s vote was more than 3% and so it will continue to received State funding.
However, it’s a long, long way back from this General Election drubbing.
