New Irish Political party born

I have just spent the last couple of days in Dublin, where I was invited by the Emerald Forum, the group of dissident Irish Green Party members who left the party over NAMA.

A lengthy meeting in the Teachers Club, Parnell Street, produced a draft constitution and a draft manifesto....I am still not sure of whether they came up with a 'Federation with a Party structure' or a 'Party with federal structure' but a start has been made

Well its still very concentrated in Donegal and Wicklow and lot of people are waiting to see how it will develop before getting involved but the decision has been made to form a new Irish political party and to contest elections on a platform of anti-corruption, local democracy, environment, peace and social justice.

The Donegal Green Party are very impressive people and it was a pleasure to meet them for the first time and of course to buy the great Frank Gallagher a pint of guinness.

One of the high points of the weekend was hearing how Frank got involved with the German Green Party, simply because he was working as a carpenter in Germany and was asked to build a roof for a building in a protest camp against the expansion of Frankfurt runaway....he also told me that every local bar he went into took a poster for protest except one run by another Irish man, a certain John Gormley. This was back in the 1980s.

Cllr Pat Kavanagh, who was one of very few Greens to be elected last year, is also an impressive person, she is a committed community activist and has also supported the 'Shell-to-Sea' campaign.

For her the Greens support for NAMA was a disaster and she was appalled by them walking away from campaigns that they had supported like Shell to Sea and Tara.

I wish the project good luck but the re-birth of green politics in Ireland is going to be a hard job and there is resistance to the very term 'green' in the country.

I hope other region Green Parties join Donegal, do check out the Donegal Green Party website here and I will post more news when I hear it.

Oceanfrogblog 'A blog by a true Irish Green, who is disgusted by the performance, ethics, and gombeenism of the Irish Green Party in Government' is also very useful for news.