This isn’t about guardians of Ireland’s rural soul versus the Gonzaga Greens - it’s about us all
Studying ecology was the preserve of a privileged few in Ireland in 1979. Eamon Ryan was one of them, as was Ciarán Cuffe, both then students at the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College, a private school in Ranelagh in South Dublin. It stirred in them a mission and purpose that recent election results have suggested is now limping rather than – as climate change demands it should be – roaring.
The decline in support for the Green Party undermines the maxim used about smaller parties in Irish politics: that they need to be radical or redundant. This phrase, employed by Michael McDowell when speaking of the now-redundant Progressive Democrats, needs reconsideration, as it is being radical that is threatening the Green Party with redundancy.
The organisation of bicycle tours was Ryan’s business before he devoted himself to full-time politics. There was a message in that pursuit that remains relevant; as Ryan put it early in his political career, “I think you can be enterprising and concerned.” The Green agenda, however, as he suggested in his resignation statement this week, has been narrated as one of punishment and loss, the changes and adaptations relating to climate and nature commonly referred to as an “attack” on those who see themselves as........
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