Eamon Ryan announces he is stepping down as Green Party Leader

They will have to find her first.

If they are anyways bothered about being green they'd be banning the likes of glyphosate and coming up with, while annoying, low cost solutions instead of driving everyone into poverty.

I always thought if they were so bothered about cars for example they could mandate people are only licenced to drive a 1 litre petrol unless they can show stronger need, like tradesmen or families over x amount of kids. It would be a damn site better having the option of a 2nd hand Yaris than HAVING to try and come up with the price of a new electric car.

Even things such as mandating homeowners can only cut the lawn in September and have to let lawns be habitats, while ensuring fines for anyone trying to gravel or concrete over the lawns out of spite gets massive fines. Like the councils with public areas or farmers in green schemes.

Something effective not just tax, tax tax.

Look at EU level, renewed Mosantos license for glyphosate for 10 years cause you know well green is for the little guys to pay.

There are no low cost solutions to going green, that is the issue that so many refuse to face. We have exploited the planet cheaply, fixing it costs money, doing thing sustainably costs money.

Everyone will have to pay more for ordinary stuff, living standards will level out.

On a much broader perspective, if the planet is to be fixed in an equal and fair manner over the next 100 years, living standards will have to fall in Ireland to allow the poorer parts of the world to catch up.

You'd think so but I've seen a number of large scale cycling infrastructure projects around over the last few years and the result after millions of euro spent is narrower traffic lanes resulting in greater build up of traffic and more pollution. The cyclists haven't materialised mostly because people who were driving prior to the new road layouts still need to drive now, mainly because public transport is still rubbish.

The fact that most of these routes are not going into the city makes things worse, sections of random roads in the suburbs are "upgraded" that lead back to roads with little to no cycling infrastructure, usually the busier routes with the most cyclists.

It's the stupid approach that annoys people, not the fact that cycling infrastructure is being built.

I know your post is well-intentioned as an example of some alternatives but the 2 examples you cite are as bad if not worse than what is currently on the table.

Limiting people to 1L cars unless they can prove to the State that they need/deserve to drive a bigger/better one (no doubt at even higher premiums/tax rates than they cost now) and trying to tell people when they can mow their garden and that they must leave it as a wild unkept forest for flies, bugs and what not on their doorstep is frankly socialist overreach fantasy.

It's even more unpallatable when all this is meaningless on a global scale. Ireland is a country of 5 million people - less than many major cities. This notion peddled by the Greens that we must prostrate ourselves on the altar of environmentalism to save the planet or lead the way is ideological nonsense. We're neither that important nor influential and so long as the big global players (at country and company levels) can do pretty much whatever they want, very little will change.

The way we'll get out of this "crisis" (quotation marks very much intentional!) is through technological advancement, and I don't mean forcing everyone into 50/60k electric cars which are just as bad if not worse in their own way for the planet. Cleaner industry, manufacturing improvements, more efficiencies etc - not taxing the end user into oblivion while berating them at how the planet will burn if they don't just suck it up and pay up or live like peasants.

The sooner the rest of Ryan's party join him in their rightful place of political irrelevency the better.

He's no loss to the Greens. Either would Martin or ROG.

Grace O'Sollivan would be an ideal candidate to replace him. A calming voice who spoke some common sense in the lead up to the EU Elections, unfortunately she paid the price for the errors of the aforementioned trio above.

In essence, i think the majority of our popluation are happy to buy in to realistic targets, aims with regards our environment (Like who doesn't have a green bin for example)

They were poor communicators, with some ill thought out ideas and i found they also spoke in a condascending manner.

They'll take their medicine come GE time but if they have the cop on, they should re-group and see how they can do things better and get the buy in of people outside of those hypocritical suburbanites who always give them their number 1 vote.

Well, of course he’ll say that, it does sound better than “I don’t want to oversee our annihilation in the General election”

I see Hazel Chu being mooted as a potential replacement

God help them if that’s their choice

She’s much more interested in race baiting and toxic divisive politics than she is in the environment

Just curious but by what measure has the country been left in a financial mess? Ireland is more financially stable than it has ever been and has some of the healthiest balance sheets in the world right now. So what do you base this on?

I'm most píssed off about the cap being tethered to my carton of milk! Damn you Ryan. Damn you all!!

any chance you could tell me where the "10km segregated from main road and well paved wide cycle path " that you never saw a cyclist on is? as someone who is boring enough to keep up with good cycle path and their existence all over ireland i'd love to know

Yet Ireland experienced phenomenal growth during their tenure. So any anti growth policy they may have had has been wholly ineffective

We can't afford nuclear. New nuclear technology might be part of a future mix but right now it's of little use to Ireland. Renewables are the only option.

Ah give us a break - Ireland is one of the richest countries in the world. A tenner a month really isnt a lot to most people in this country, in fact it is a near irrelevant amount. Its not much more than the price of a pint. Stop with the poor mouthing.

I think you are being disingenous with that post. You have no idea how tight some peoples budgets are/might be.

Not true, the UK is spending £26 billion on a new plant and it's operation will have to be heavily subsidised because it is wholly uncompetitive with renewable energy per kwh. Then the tax payer will pay many billions more to safely decommission.

Off shore wind is not experimental. It's proven tech.

I've never given the greens a number 1 in dail election, I think I gave Grace O'Sullivan my number 1 in 2019 though. (I'm a Labour supporter...)

Giving out non stop about the Greens is usually a good red flag of who to avoid talking to for extended periods of time and not get into a car with so if they fall off you lose that element of society being as obvious unfortunately.

But again 90km commutes are nearly unheared of.