Green Party (Ireland) - History

History

The party's first electoral outing was when 7 candidates contested the November 1982 general election under the Ecology Party banner, winning 0.2% of the vote. Following a name-change, they contested the 1984 European Parliament elections, with their party founder winning 1.9% in the Dublin constituency. The following year they won their first election when Marcus Counihan was elected to Killarney Urban District Council during the 1985 Local Elections. The party nationally ran 34 candidates and won 0.6% of the vote. The party continued to struggle until the general election of 1989 when the again renamed party won its first seat in parliament, the Dáil, when Roger Garland was elected in Dublin South. In the 1994 European Parliament election Patricia McKenna topped the poll for the Dublin Constituency and Nuala Ahern won a seat in Leinster. They retained their seats in 1999 although the party lost 5 councillors in local elections held that year despite an increase in their vote. In the general election of 1997 the party gained a seat when John Gormley won a Dáil seat in Dublin South–East. At the general election of 2002 that it made a breakthrough, getting 6 Teachtaí Dála (TDs) elected to the Dáil with 4% of the national vote. However, in the election to the European Parliament of June 2004, the party lost both of the European Parliament seats. In the 2004 local elections at county level it increased its number of councillors from 8 to 18 out of 883 and at town council level its number of councillors increased from 5 to 14 out of 744. However, the vast majority of its seats were lost at the 2009 council elections, including its entire traditional Dublin base, where - with the exception of a Town Council Seat in Balbriggan - it now holds no council seats at all in Dublin and only three County Council seats in total. It has about fifteen hundred members.