Irish Times<\/a>, \u00d3 R\u00edord\u00e1in responded to a question from the Netherlands senator Eddy Hartog by saying: \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.<\/p>\n\u201cRecently, the Dutch Labour Party and the Dutch Green Party have joined forces\u2026 and that\u2019s what the Irish Labour Party and the Irish Green Party should do,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GroenLinks and the Labour Party (PvdA) merged to become\u00a0Progressief Nederland (PRO) in July, after almost 90% of members of both parties backed the move. The process began after the country\u2019s 2021 general election results, when the parties won 17 of a possible 150 seats between them.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s 2024 general election saw Labour increase its seats from six to 11, while the Green Party \u2013 having been in government with Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael \u2013 experienced a near wipeout as it went from 12 seats to just one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asked about \u00d3 R\u00edord\u00e1in\u2019s proposal on Newstalk Breakfast this morning, O\u2019Gorman said he has \u201cgreat respect\u201d for Labour, adding that the two parties work well together in the D\u00e1il, the Seanad and at local council level.<\/p>\n
He said the Green Party\u2019s role is to make sure that issues like energy, climate and the environment are \u201calways at the centre\u201d of public discussion and political decision-making.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve sought to do that in the 45 years since we were founded. I think our distinct voice is more important than ever now, and I\u2019m not convinced that merging with another party would allow that distinct voice still be there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m also not sure a merged party would actually do better at elections, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
When pressed on whether that was a no, he said: \u201cCooperation with Labour? Cooperation with other progressive parties? Yes, but a merger isn\u2019t on our agenda right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GREEN PARTY LEADER Roderic O\u2019Gorman has rejected the idea that his party should merge with Labour.\u00a0 The suggestion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8934,132669,61,60,14235,43,134005,13455],"class_list":["post-631393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-green-party","tag-greens","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-labour","tag-news","tag-no-thanks","tag-roderic-o"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631393","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=631393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}