The Green Party leader in Northern Ireland has said that his party lost seats in both the Assembly and at council level after the DUP gave Sinn Féin an open goal over their initial refusal to go into the Executive and thus denying Michelle O'Neill her chance to become the first nationalist First Minister.
Senator Mal O'Hara was speaking to Belfast Live ahead of his party's convention and AGM which is due to be held in Belfast this weekend.
The North Belfast man became the second Green Party leader to lose their seat within a year when he lost his seat on Belfast City Council at the 2023 local elections. Earlier this year, he was appointed to the Seanad to fill the vacancy left by Sinn Féin's Niall Ó Donnaghaile, which he described as an "honour of a lifetime."
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"I went into that prepared to fight an election campaign against any other candidates, and I think the departure of a northerner and me coming in as another northerner, I think most parties in the Seanad and in the Oireachtas saw that it's sensible to have a northern voice in the Seanad," he said.
"I've been welcomed with open arms and I've been able to raise issues about the North. So, it's been a really powerful, humbling experience and great to be involved in a progressive government, which is moving forward legislation, creating a healthy economy but also reducing greenhouse gas emissions by almost 7 per cent in the last year."
When the Green Party opted to go into coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael following the 2020 General Election in the south, Mal O'Hara was very vocal in his opposition to the move.
However, as the party prepare to go to the polls once again, he has acknowledged that he was proven wrong by what they managed to deliver while in office.
"Well, I think if you're a democrat in a democratic party, we had a vote. Overwhelmingly, the members North and South 76 per cent of them voted in favour to go into government. I had said on balance that I wasn't sure that it was strong enough," he told us.
"It's rare you want to be wrong in politics, but I think my colleagues have proved some of my concerns wrong, and we've seen massive improvements in terms of environmental issues, huge investment in rail transport, buses, infrastructure, we've seen progress on women's health care.
"We've seen progress on a more kind of compassionate asylum process, and then across the board benefit increases for the most vulnerable in society and we've had four years of progressive budgets."
Senator O'Hara added that despite initial reticence, he is looking forward to seeing what comes of the negotiations to form a government after the upcoming election in the south.
Despite a heightened awareness of environmental issues, this has not appeared to translate into increased support for the Green Party in Northern Ireland after they lost both their MLAs in 2022 and three council seats in 2023.
"If we look at the last two elections, I think it's fair to say we had a very toxic political environment in Northern Ireland now, not to take away anything from Sinn Féin's formidable election machine, but the DUP gave them an open goal by denying a nationalist First Minister," Senator O'Hara said.
"People who may have been minded to vote for Greens or other parties lent a vote to Sinn Féin to prove a point to the DUP.
"I think that's one particular circumstance. The second one is that Northern Ireland, we're still a post-conflict society. So when there's political instability, often people will go back to what they're familiar with."
Senator O'Hara said that he hopes to see Green MLAs back in the Assembly after the 2027 election and dismissed the suggestion that his party's base does not extend beyond the Greater Belfast area.
"I think if you look at activist groups that are developing around environmental issues, they're all over Northern Ireland. They're not just focused in Belfast," he said.
"So, I think about the campaign against gold mining in the Sperrins, I think about environmental protectors about historic sites in Rostrevor, I think about the gas caverns in Carrick and Greenisland and around the east coast. I think about holiday lets and homes not being available for people in the North Coast because of holiday lets.
"There are campaign groups that are developing outside of the Belfast area and I have been engaging with some of those groups over the summer period and I would like to see green candidates standing right across Northern Ireland with an opportunity to get back into the Assembly or to gain seats on local councils throughout the North."
Earlier this year, former Green Party leader Clare Bailey chose to nominate and support the SDLP MP for South Belfast and Mid Down Claire Hanna at the General Election rather than throwing her weight behind the Green Party candidate and her former constituency office worker Cllr Aíne Groogan.
When asked how he felt about that and what the dynamic was like within the party after, Mal O'Hara said: "Clare moved on from the party a year and a half ago. She's a private citizen and perfectly entitled to vote for whoever or nominate whoever she wishes.
"I'm excited about a new candidate in South Belfast, Councillor Aíne Groogan, who just come off the back of a very successful year as Deputy Lord Mayor in Belfast and I'm excited to see what we do in coming years, and hopefully we take that Assembly seat in South Belfast and Mid Down."
When it comes to the workings of the Assembly, Senator O'Hara hit out at the Executive saying that they are "very good at style over substance".
"I think I described the Programme for Government as a photo opportunity turned into a word document," he said.
"But we've had 26 years of government here, on and off. Admittedly, almost 50 per cent of the time in Northern Ireland we've had no Executive.
"But in 26 years the crisis that we face in Northern Ireland is attributable to the local parties who have had power here with 57,000 people on the homeless list. That's not just because of Tory austerity. That's because of poor governance, instability and lack of policy decisions from the Executive parties.
"Lough Neagh is in the mess that it's in because of Going For Growth, a strategy to industrialise into factory farming, moving away from small family holdings or small scale farms to more industrialised farming. And lo and behold, the Greens opposed it. Over a decade ago, the Executive parties supported it.
"So, I think when we talk about the bad situations and the challenging circumstances that Northern Ireland is in, we need to put blame at the Executive parties who have mismanaged this place for 26 years."
When it comes to the Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Minister's recently published Northern Ireland Environmental Improvement Plan, Senator O'Hara said that he has "significant concerns" about its contents.
"We've heard the environment minister talk about education and awareness. We don't need that," he said.
"What we need is fines, because the recent news story last week is that people who are polluting are paying minimal fines 150, a few 100 pounds. They're building it into their business case. As part of the model, they can absorb the cost of fines.
"We need proper fines and most importantly, we need an independent Environmental Protection Agency and that will be the body that sits outside government and can enforce environmental standards in Northern Ireland."
One area where the Green Party have been leading the way is on drug policy and their campaign for a safe injection site in Belfast.
On that, Mal said: "I sit on the Joint Oireachtas Committee on drug use. So that was a citizens assembly put into government by the Greens.
"It produced 36 recommendations as a committee. We've considered those recommendations and we put our report out a couple of weeks ago and the high level elements of that are to decriminalise all drugs for personal use and regulate and legislate for cannabis on a not for profit model.
"I would love a similar form of ambition in the North. Unfortunately, the only the only movement that we've seen on that has been an Assembly debate, which literally called for more of the same. We know that what we're doing currently is not working.
"We need a safe injection zone site in Belfast where people can go in and safely take drugs and get put into other additional supports around homelessness, poverty, inequality or what other social challenges they may have. But we also need legislators at the Assembly to be brave and start addressing this issue.
"Hundreds of people are dying every year because of drug deaths in Northern Ireland. It's simply not good enough for ministers of health, education, justice and communities to sit on their hands and do nothing."
Video by Harry Bateman/Belfast Live
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