Irish politics is stuck on a loop

It’s Green bin day! That was the general refrain of many Irish political wags as the country continues to tally the count from Friday’s election. The first indicators from the exit polls were that the Green party who had been minority, but deeply unpopular, members of the governing coalition had just been hammered by the voters.

Speaking at the main count centre in Dublin’s RDS, an ashen faced party leader Roderic O’Gorman admitted that ‘this has not been a good day for us’. On this point, he is certainly correct. They are now on course to lose eight of the twelve seats they had previously held and he ruefully admitted that, ‘some very good colleagues, who have worked hard for the last four and half years are now very scared of losing their seats’. As well they might.

MPs such as Hazel Chu, Catherine Martin and O’Gorman himself were regular features of the Irish media, but as the exit polls suggested, the Green agenda was an issue for only 4 per cent of the voters.