{"id":631207,"date":"2026-09-21T07:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T07:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631207\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T07:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T07:52:16","slug":"labour-and-the-green-party-should-merge-says-irish-mep-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631207\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour and the Green Party should merge, says Irish MEP \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Green Party <\/a>and Labour <\/a>should amalgamate, according to MEP Aodh\u00e1n \u00d3 R\u00edord\u00e1in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The veteran Labour politician proposed the merger between the two parties during an event organised by the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) on Friday night. <\/p>\n

According to the most recent Irish Times poll, Labour and the Green Party each enjoy the support of 4 per cent of the electorate. Labour has 11 TDs while the Green Party has one. <\/p>\n

\u00d3 R\u00edord\u00e1in, a former junior minister in a Fine Gael-Labour coalition, has suggested that the two parties should follow the example of their Dutch counterparts and merge.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the two Dutch left-wing parties formally combined into the new Progressief Nederland (PRO). The merger followed a disappointing 2021 election for the parties when they won only 17 of a possible 150 seats between them. The merger was supported by the overwhelming majority of each party\u2019s membership at their party conferences last year. <\/p>\n

Speaking at an IIEA culture night event about Europe\u2019s past, present and future, \u00d3 R\u00edord\u00e1in said the Republic was fortunate to have mostly pro-European politicians and \u201cwe can be quite proud of that.\u201d He was answering a question from Eddy Hartog, a member of the Dutch Senate. <\/p>\n

\"\"What is driving the abuse and intimidation of politicians here?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll say one thing about Dutch politics \u2026 if it was a closed meeting, I might say it more readily, but I\u2019ll say it anyway,\u201d \u00d3 R\u00edord\u00e1in said. <\/p>\n

\u201cRecently, the Dutch Labour Party and the Dutch Green Party have joined forces … and that\u2019s what the Irish Labour Party and the Irish Green Party should do.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is understood that the proposed merger has not been discussed with Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik. <\/p>\n

Bacik has previously said that a merger with the Social Democrats<\/a>, the party\u2019s main electoral rival, is \u201cpossible\u201d as there were no ideological differences between the two. This has been rebuffed by Holly Cairns\u2019s party, with the Social Democrats leader ruling out a merger. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Green Party and Labour should amalgamate, according to MEP Aodh\u00e1n \u00d3 R\u00edord\u00e1in. The veteran Labour politician proposed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3775,8934,61,60,6189,5151,43],"class_list":["post-631207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-fine-gael","tag-green-party","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-labour-party","tag-netherlands","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}