Eamon Ryan resigns before the General Election.

what additional tax?

Never said he didn't, nor did i suggest there were any rules about flying.

My point was did he, as leader of the green party and someone who is supposedly worried about the climate really need to travel to china, kenya etc.

If you are then going support adding carbon taxes etc the optics are not good.

You could be skating on very thin ice with that last sentence. You're correct insofar as said travel is by foot or bike preferably and after that public transport whether train, bus or boat.

Generally travel incorporates tourism and take one look at the level of support for the Irish tourism industry from a Green minister. If you were to judge by actions or lack of action, you'd quickly conclude that the Greens are indifferent at best to travel & tourism. Not in their line of vision at all (and I understand that), but why then did they take the brief?

She was, until the RTE fiasco broke, the Minister responsible for doling out huge wedges of taxpayers' largesse to the Arts and Culture luvvies. Hence she got lots of soft publicity and favourable coverage in the media.

However, her incompetence and the ongoing series of bad decisions that she has made over RTE suggest to me that she's incapable of running an ice cream van, let alone a Government Department with a ludicrously large remit.

It would be jaw dropping is she became the Greens' next leader, assuming that by some miracle she managed to retain her seat. However, given that it's the Greens, it wouldn't really surprise me either!

I don't understand. How did they do badly at the last GE's when it was their best result in history?

It's the next one they'll do badly at.

The only reason the greens are in government is their ability to compromise, they've been able to effectively see off internal heaves at the same time.

What you're really arguing is that they are too effective at getting their manifesto implemented as a junior partner whil also being a stable partner, and you happen to disagree with that manifesto.

I would not see a stable government partner being one who threatening to collapse a government if they didn`t get their way on culling cattle when it was obvious to anyone who cared to look that it had nothing to do with reducing global emission, just Irish Green Party`s ideology.

Their policy on electricity generation alone has now been shown to be a complete clusterfcuk that they cannot even give a cost for, and by their own admission is not even technically possible. Electorate reading an uncosted manifesto very often do not realise what the financial implications are until the rubber begins to hit the road. If the results of the local and E.U. elections are any indication then it seems the electorate now do and they are not in favor.

The carbon tax, for one

As the airlines have warned people will be paying hundreds of Euro extra for flights as a direct result of the stupidity with Dublin Airport this winter that Ryan refuses to fix. The airlines will make a mint while they take their aircraft and business elsewhere. Every single one of those passengers will know this is a result of ideological madness getting in the way again and also those who won't be employed or who will lose their jobs at the airport or in airlines.

The knock on affect on the economy as well.

Annihilation awaits at the next election for the Green Party. It's not only the airport, that's one of very many issues they have been found to be hopelessly incompetent with.