May 25th, 2019
The Green Party is set to witness a significant surge in seats in local
elections in county Cork, early tallies have revealed.
According to initial tallies, the Greens are set to occupy as many
as four seats on Cork City Council, a significant gain for the party.
Seasoned party politician Dan Boyle alongside younger members Oliver
Moran, Lorna Bogue and Collette Finn are holding a fixed position in the city’s
local elections.
Early tallies from Dublin also reveal that the Green Party is set
to top the poll in at least four wards in the capital.
Overall, the party looks set to be the big winners in the local
elections, with early tallies confirming the estimates in yesterday’s RTE exit
poll that the party could take in nine per cent of the vote.
Councillor Roderic O’Gorman, who is expected to gain a seat in
Dublin West, told RTE early today that the party expects to win at least 30 of
the 82 seats it is contesting.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said today that the Green Party’s electoral success is “a very clear message” from the public that they “want us to do more on climate action”.
Message
clear on the doors
Speaking to The Green News, Green Party candidate, Lorna
Bogue said that she was not expecting to gain such levels of support from
voters.
The young politician said that “the issue of climate change was
coming at people’s doors again and again”, adding, however, that the Green’s
favourable position is not entirely due to the current, heightened public
attention the issue.
Ms Bogue said that party campaigners had gone door to door to
convey their message to voters for months and the results prove that the public
has responded well to their relentless campaigning.
“We’ve been running all over the country canvassing really hard;
you have to talk to people,” she said. “No matter how many posters you have up
there, how many leaflets you have, how much money you are throwing, the most
important thing is talking to people.”
Ms Bogue continued that the party is not solely concerned with addressing
environmental issues and is committed to addressing the likes of “housing,
inequality and access to health services”.
Mark Cronin, who is also running for a seat in Cork told The
Green News that the public’s favourable shift toward the greens indicating
their support for a “green government”.
“We are hoping that this is part of a surge that will keep on growing,” Mr Cronin said. “There’s been a shift with all these reports about climate change coming out that are actually quite frightening, and we are realising that we have to change.”
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