November saw the Greens suffer a near-extinction event, going from 12 TDs to just one; Dublin 15’s own Roderic O’Gorman.
The sole survivor was front and centre as the party held a conference in the Castleknock Hotel earlier this month, and O’Gorman told supporters that “climate action is more relevant than ever.”
Speaking on home turf (O’Gorman was previously a councillor for the Castleknock area), O’Gorman conceded that “the election result hurt.”
Addressing the conference, O’Gorman said “we can be proud and stand over the policies we drove on climate, on transport, on family leave and in the arts over the past few years. Our records on these will continue to deliver into the future, and our core issues are not going away – and neither are we”.
The party said that the event was “focused on rebuilding and looking to the future,” with over 400 delegates in attendance as the party figures out where to go next.
“I’m eternally grateful to the people of Dublin 15 and Dublin 7 for returning me to the 34th Dáil. Serving as a Minister and TD for Dublin West for the past 5 years has been an incredibly rewarding experience. Now I look forward to continuing to work for the people of Dublin West in my new role as an Opposition TD ” O’Gorman stated.
O’Gorman will be sitting on the opposition benches over the course of the next Dáil and has promised to be a “bollocks” to the people he used to attend Cabinet meetings with.
Entering into his second term as a TD, O’Gorman said the new term will see him be an opposition TD for the first time.
“So whereas I’ve never been an opposition TD before, I’ve been a government minister with a lot of incoming fire, and I know where that fire hurts the most.”
“I absolutely will be using whatever I’ve learned over the last four-and-a-half years to hold this government, which I don’t think will have the interests of implementing the kind of policies we implemented.”
“I’ll be using that voice, that position that I have, to hold it to account every single day.”
The former minister said that Labour and the Social Democrats, with their combined 21 TDs, should have gone into government.
“The speed with which these parties have dropped the mandate that they were given by the electorate is genuinely shocking,” he said.
“I have to ask, what is the point in chasing the vote if you’re afraid to do anything with it?”
O’Gorman became leader of the Greens following the resignation of Eamon Ryan last June.
Ryan’s resignation came in the aftermath of a disappointing set of local and European results for the Greens; the party lost both of their MEPs (Dublin man Ciaran Cuffe among them) and at a local level, went from five councillors to one on Fingal County Council.
Under Green Party rules, a new leadership contest must be held within six months of a general election, and O’Gorman confirmed he would be a candidate in the race.