THE GREEN PARTY and Labour have shied away from making any firm commitments about who they will or won’t form a coalition with after the next general election.

Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman said he is “certainly open” to going back into government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and that they have made a “good government” together over the last four-and-a-half years.

He added that such a coalition would need to have “strong Green Party policies” embedded in its programme for government. He didn’t rule out a coalition with other parties either.

“We spoke to other parties in 2020. We spoke to SocDems, to Sinn Féin, to the Labour Party. Ultimately, the numbers weren’t there.”

O’Gorman previously said he was concerned that recent polling suggests Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael could form a government without his party.

The Business Post/Red C poll at the weekend showed that Fianna Fáil is up three percentage points to 21% while Fine Gael has dropped by a point to 22%. The Green Party is on just 3%.

Last week, Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris said in the Dáil that he wouldn’t go into government with any party that sought to scrap the First Home and Help-to-Buy schemes.

He was responding to Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns who said that the government’s housing policy has resulted in house prices increasing by 10% nationally.

Labour TD Ged Nash said that his party’s gripes with the schemes are “not unusual”.

He said there have been continuous warnings from politicians and experts that the Help-to-Buy scheme would inflate house prices and encourage “activity that would already take place in the market”.

Labour would seek to “phase down” the schemes and instead use the money spent on the schemes to build more social and affordable housing such as cost rentals.

The Taoiseach has confirmed that the election will take place on a Friday and that the possible dates are within a “pretty narrow window”.

The likeliest date for the country to go to the polls is 29 November, the date understood to be favoured by multiple government ministers.

Nash says it’s “very early” to predict who will have the opportunity to form a government, but that the country doesn’t need a “conservative coalition”.

“We’ve a very, very long way to go, but I will say this: The Labour party is a party of government. The party that has always put this country first, and the last thing that this country needs is another conservative coalition,” he said.

“The policies of this conservative coalition have set young people back and have set people on low and middle incomes back. They have created division in this country, division between the haves and the have-nots, and that was completely unacceptable.”

Before the 2020 election, Labour made their hard lines clear and ultimately decided not to take part in talks with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Labour representatives were outside Leinster House today launching their plan to tackle the cost of living.

The strategy aims to “take on the root causes of high prices” and increase regulation to prevent price gouging.

As part of the plans, the party seeks to introduce a living wage for all and keep social welfare payments in line with inflation.