Commitments to Green agendas and policies must be upheld by the next Dáil, according to outgoing minister Roderic O’Gorman.

Following a disappointing result for the Green Party in the recent General Election, Dublin West TD Roderic O’Gorman has been left as the party’s only national representative.

On The Anton Savage Show, Mr O'Gorman said that the next Government still has an obligation to follow through on policies that were agreed on while his party was in power.

“I’m an opposition TD now and my job is to hold the Government to account for the commitments it’s going to make in the programme for Government we’re going to see in the next week or two,” he said.

“Also, [to] hold them to account for the things that were agreed over the last four and a half years – the climate action plan, our public transport investment targets – I want to see them delivered.

“If I see the new Government straying from these, if I see them, as part of the various deals they’re going to cut with Independents, trying to use money that was allocated for major public transport projects, [or] for climate investment to sweeten those deals, I’m going to be very vocal.”

A digital mock-up of a Metrolink entrance from the inside of St Stephen's Green Park in Dublin. Image: Metrolink gallery. 29/10/24.

Mr O’Gorman said that rebuilding the Green Party will be a ‘significant challenge’, but that it’s been done before and will be done again.

“In 2011, we had no TDs, no state funding, we had two county councillors in the whole country after we left Government in 2011,” he said.

“It took a long time – until the 2019 local and European elections, where we made a really significant breakthrough – but we’re in a much different situation now.

“We do have one voice in the Dáil through my own election, we are running candidates in the senate elections right now and we have a strong chance of getting at least one, if not more, senators elected at the end of January.”

Selling agendas

According to Mr O’Gorman, if his party had spent more time selling their agendas to the public while in Government, they could have avoided the level of defeats seen in the General Election.

“Policy after policy [that] we implemented were supporting people,” he said.

“But we were so focused on doing what’s next, on trying to get that programme for Government, to get each Green objective ticked off, that I don’t think we spend enough time on the politics of actually selling and speaking about our achievements and describing how they were actually helping people.”

Mr O’Gorman also said that the cost-of-living crisis had taken much of the focus away from climate issues.

Listen back here:

Featured image: Roderic O'Gorman in the Newstalk studio. Image: Newstalk. 12/02/2025