The Greens and Dermot Aherne

Riskymove

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0715/breaking28.htm


There seems to be a growing issue between the Greens and Dermot Ahern...interesting comments from Dan Boyle..see bit in bold

could this snowball?




The Green Party last night voted against the Government for the first time since the administration was formed in 2007, when its two Senators rejected a guillotining of the final stage of the controversial Criminal Justice Amendment Bill.

Senators Dan Boyle and Deirdre de Burca also abstained in the final vote when the Bill was passed by 35 votes to 7, with the support of Fine Gael. The Greens voted against the Government motion to take the report or final stage last night rather than allowing extra time today but it was accepted by 24 to 20 votes.

Mr Boyle, the party chairman, said afterwards that the Greens were unhappy with assurances given by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern about how the review of the legislation would be conducted in 12 months time.

“We wanted the balance to be measured appropriately and wanted to avoid a situation that existed with previous legislation like the Prevention of Terrorism Act where these things went through automatically on the nod every 12 months.” The Bill provides for non-jury Special Criminal Court trials for criminal gangs and for the evidence of serving gardaí or former gardaí of any rank to give expert evidence as to the existence of such gangs.

Mr Boyle acknowledged that the Greens had an “ongoing difficulty” with Mr Ahern and justice legislation. “This is building for a long time. It has to do with a particular relationship. It has to do with how policy in a particular area is progressing and our ongoing discomfort with that.”

He said he did not know if Mr Ahern was being deliberately provocative but “the effect of his actions is not to properly recognise our concerns on this and other legislation and we feel we had to send a clear signal as to how we feel the quality of that relationship has to improve”.
He denied their vote was anything to do with the party’s conference on Saturday to deal with their approach to the Lisbon Treaty referendum and a review of the programme for government. A lot of the damage had “already been done” to the party through legislation such as the Defamation Bill, and on student loans. He said on the relationship with Fianna Fáil that “we can’t honestly say that that exists to a level that we’d like”.

He said they were looking for a “robust, quite stringent procedure of review”. He said they wanted a clear statement about how the review would take place because “it’s obviously a Bill that has serious connotations on whether rights are affected or not. How the justice committee would be involved and how there was confidence that it would be subject to constant questioning as to whether it compromised the rights of all citizens or not.”

Mr Boyle said they were looking for a stronger set of safeguards. He said the party leadership was aware of their move.

Fine Gael Seanad leader Frances Fitzgerald described the Green move as “a pathetic gesture from a discredited and directionless Green party”.

“If they are not going to support the Government why don’t they just pull out of government,” she added.

Run_to_da_hills

The Greens know there is a lot of public discontent over this issue and are hoping for public support if they try to reject it.

JonathanAnon

If the Greens were going to object to it they should have done so in the Dail. As Vincent Browne said to Dan Boyle last night, there was no sense in having a debate about this as they could DO NOTHING anyway. It was already passed at that stage. Usual senate rubbish, pretending to each other that they have a purpose. Get rid of this old boys club now...

Dan Boyle is a very poor performer anyway. And ffs both him and Deirdre De Burca LOST their Dail seats. They were not democratically elected by the people of Ireland, they were elected out. Why should they have ANY influence on legislation, or any right to even debate it (for €70,000 a year)?

Het-Field

JonathanAnon wrote: »

If the Greens were going to object to it they should have done so in the Dail. As Vincent Browne said to Dan Boyle last night, there was no sense in having a debate about this as they could DO NOTHING anyway. It was already passed at that stage. Usual senate rubbish, pretending to each other that they have a purpose. Get rid of this old boys club now...

Dan Boyle is a very poor performer anyway. And ffs both him and Deirdre De Burca LOST their Dail seats. They were not democratically elected by the people of Ireland, they were elected out. Why should they have ANY influence on legislation, or any right to even debate it (for €70,000 a year)?

In fairness, De Burca has never had a seat to lose/


Plus judging by their respective European performances, neither will be entering the Dail anytime soon

whadabouchasir

Riskymove wrote: »

could this snowball?

Hopefully it will i'm looking forward to a change in Government.

I'd imagine the only two Greens remotely enthused about the prospect of an election are those two. Don't think the Government will fall over a Dan Boyle comment.

lostexpectation

this is what all minister of justice do, there always the bad guy, they always like it.

The greens have some conference at the weekend there as well...They'll surely get an earful..and with an bord snip tomorrow..

Traumadoc

The greens pretending they have "liathroidi"....

dresden8

Boyle posturing when he knew the vote wasn't going to be lost. Being in government and opposition at the same time, at least the greens have learnt one thing from FF.

His only problem with Ahern is that little Dermo is treating the Greens with the contempt they deserve.

And of course it won't do Dermo any harm, him positioning himself as the hard man in Irish politics.

What a merry little political dance.