LAST UPDATE | 1 Dec 2024

GREEN PARTY LEADER Roderic O’Gorman has won the party’s only seat in a hotly contested constituency count.

He was elected on the 13th count in Dublin West. 

The party, which picked up 12 seats after a swell of support in the 2020 election, was facing virtual wipeout in the general election, with O’Gorman admitting it was entering a period of “rebuild”.

O’Gorman, the outgoing Minister for Children and Equality, narrowly secured the fifth seat in Dublin West, with Ruth Coppinger taking the fourth seat.

“I’m relieved, delighted and a bit emotional as well. It’s been a long, long two days here,” O’Gorman said shortly after the final results were announced.

“Despite the fact that the Greens have had a bad result, we are very much here for the long haul. The work to rebuild our party begins tomorrow, and it is incredibly important that we will have a voice in Dáil Éireann”.

Speaking to reporters earlier today, O’Gorman said he has “no regrets” about going into a three-party government in 2020, but said the two main coalition partners did them “no favours”.

The electorate has since removed any prospect of the party re-entering government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, who are poised to take the lion’s shares of seats in the 34th Dáil.

Outgoing Green Party Minister Catherine Martin has failed to retain her seat in Dublin Rathdown, finishing in sixth place in the four-seat constituency.

Martin, who was Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media since June 2020 blamed the drop in support for Greens on the “old story of the junior coalition partner getting punished”. 

Similar results were seen in from outgoing Green Ministers in Dún Laoghaire and Carlow-Kilkenny, where neither Ossian Smyth or Malcolm Noonan managed to retain their seats.

Speaking to RTÉ, former party leader Éamon Ryan said that getting O’Gorman back to the Dáil would be a “huge step for rebuilding the party post-election”.

Roderic O’Gorman said Green candidates were getting “very few transfers” from either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.

“I don’t think they did us any favours but I wasn’t expecting them to do us favours,” he said at the count centre in Phibblestown.

“We have a very distinct political philosophy from Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, it is harder to see the difference between those two parties, and I think if they go into government again, which looks likely, the difference is more and more difficult to see”.

O’Gorman added that the Greens were “very different from  Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael when they went into government together in 2020.

“We took the risk of going in with them, we were able to deliver, but there are political consequences for taking the risk and we suffered them over this weekend,” O’Gorman said.

With additional reporting from Megan O’Brien