Greens demand best seats in the house
Saturday June 30 2007
A BIZARRE "we won't sit with them" row has erupted between the new government partners.
The Greens do not want to be seated next to the Progressive Democrats on the Government side of the Dail chamber.
The party wants to sit with Fianna Failers, with the PDs banished elsewhere, because of the environmentalists' extreme antipathy to PD policies.
The row has held up the use of electronic voting in the 30th Dail. Seat allocation in the chamber has to be agreed between the parties and firmly established before push-button voting can be introduced at every seat.
Deputies have yet to be allocated their permanent seats for the next five years, although many are sitting in their old seats.
The failure to get the seats "set in stone" means that all Dail divisions have seen the deputies trooping through voting galleries in the old-fashioned way this week - even though instant results, without the need for tellers, have been available on an electronic screen for some years now.
Fianna Failers are laughing up their sleeves at the Green antics, in which Eamon Ryan and John Gormley have been avoiding Mary Harney on the ministerial bench, and the remaining four Greens have been keeping away from Noel Grealish, the sole PD backbencher.
The party's hostility to the Progressive Democrats was demonstrated in the negotiations for Government, at which the Greens initially wanted the PDs excluded from power altogether, and then Ms Harney crowbarred out of the sensitive Health ministry.
Green party whip Ciaran Cuffe confirmed the difficulty to the Irish Independent last night.
"We want to be seen to be a coherent group in terms of our seating arrangements. We certainly don't want to be sitting in the lap of the PDs," he said.
"We see the Greens as being the second party of Government and believe the seating arrangements should reflect that."
The party rejected a suggestion that the Greens would sit in front of the PDs, which would appear to give Ms Harney and Mr Grealish elevated status over them.
The dispute seems all the more strange because Fine Gael and Sinn Fein - political arch enemies - have been sitting together all week on the Opposition benches.
When Sinn Fein had more seats, Fine Gael relied on a stairway to provide the necessary separation.
Talks between Government chief whip Tom Kitt (FF) and Mr Cuffe have been taking place over recent days.
A solution now appears to be emerging in which the Greens would have three rows together, each of two seats - with none of them touching an offending PD arm-rest.
Mr Cuffe said "nothing was agreed until everything was agreed", but there is now an expectation that the seating plan will finally be agreed next week, allowing for a return to electronic voting.
A Labour party source said last night: "Fianna Failers have been sniggering at this.
"It shows the pomposity of the Greens now they are in power, but it also rubs the PD noses in it. What could be better?"
- Senan Molony
