2024 could be off to a rather shaky start for Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, who is facing criticism after he said over the weekend that he wants to bring in reforms which would see free parking spaces taken away from public sector workers this year.
His comments have been met with more than a hint of annoyance from scores of people online, who are understandably rather sick and tired of the Greens demanding that everyone else join them in embracing climate guilt.
Over the weekend, I read some commentators posing the question amid the online chatter over Ryan’s comments that if public sector workers, including those going into hospitals to do 10-hour shifts, should teleport their way to work instead. Others wondered if he was will-fully accelerating his own demise as leader of the Greens through this hugely unpopular proposal.
Speaking on RTE’s This Week radio programme, Ryan said that the reforms, which would see free parking spaces scrapped for some public servants, were behind a desire to tackle Dublin city-centre congestion.
“The other part will be a change in the city centre traffic management system this summer to try to take out through traffic,” he told the programme.
“A lot of traffic going through the centre of Dublin is not actually going to (workplaces) or going to the shops or accessing deliveries, it’s actually just through traffic.
“We will see a radical – in my expectation – delivery of a change to the Traffic Management System which – in my mind – is vital not just for managing traffic but also reviving life in our city centre.”
Asked if he foresaw the changes, including the removal of parking spaces, to happen this year, he said: “Yes, we need to start.”
The proposal to remove the car parking spaces will be included in a plan to be brought to the government in weeks to come – and will be contained in the National Demand Management Strategy, which seeks to reduce traffic congestion in Irish towns and cities.
The point has rightly been made that Dáil parking is free for TDs and Senators, and that benefit is something which is maintained for life – with some commentators proposing that the first step, if we are to follow Ryan’s orders, should be scrapping free parking spaces for former politicians, and current ones.
Indeed, Eamon Ryan has, in the past, argued that the Dail car park could be converted into a “green space in the centre of the city”. This of course raised eyebrows from rural TDs — who pointed out it was an easy proposal to make when you live in the constituency the Dáil is in, but not so easy when you have to travel two to three hours multiple times a week.
Speaking over the weekend, he reiterated those plans, indiciating, as RTE reports, that TDs and Senators “would be asked” to give up their own parking spaces as part of the plan. Members of the Oirerachtas, he said, should “lead by example” but ultimately it would be a matter for the Oireachtas.
It strikes me that there is a gaping difference in approach here which will only exacerbate the irritation felt by ordinary people. After all, being asked to do something, and being told to do something, are rather two different things.
The indication that this will be voluntary for politicians, who are supposed to be the ultimate public servants, but demanded of the ordinary worker, only serves to expose the elitist, out of touch undertone to so much of the green activism that we are seeing.
The reaction from a number of TDs to Minister Ryan’s plan to eradicate the Dáil car park, in December 2022, is one which probably resonates with most ordinary people. Fine Gael TD tor Mayo, Michael Ring, for example was direct in his criticism, saying at the time:
“I don’t agree with it. We’re sick of the Greens now and we’re sick of their ideas […] we have to park somewhere. It’s fine for the Dublin TDs… but we need the car park, they’re just going too far, and the time has come where they have to be taken on.”
“They don’t want people to live at all,” he said of the Greens.
I think his sentiments speak to the general feeling – the majority of us have reached the point where we are sick of the Greens, and their increasingly irritating world of woke pontificating.
There is a sense, when it comes to Eamon Ryan and other high profile politicians-turned eco-warriors, that it is very much one rule for thee – and another for me.
It was Minister Ryan after all, who in July 2022, who went on the defensive about flying business class – telling an Irish newspaper that he and his ministerial colleagues should not be sent on a “guilt trip” and personally criticised. That was despite the fact the most expensive cabin seats come in three times more carbon costly than economy seats.
It again appeared to be a matter of discrepancy when, last month, the Climate Minister flew to Dubai for Cop28 three days before returning to Ireland for the Government’s confidence vote in Helen McEntee, before making the return journey to Dubai again.
That was a move which doubled his flight-related carbon emissions, ironically in the middle of negotiations on how to reduce global emissions. More and more people, despite the mainstream narrative, see Cop28 as little more than a carnival of green hypocrisy where the woke and wealthy can lecture the rest of us ordinary plebs on how to tighten our belts.
People have long been able to detect at least a whiff of hypocrisy from Ryan and the Greens, who also appear increasingly like zealots to ordinary working people, not least through their latest suggestion to rid the public sector of free parking. The idea of scrapping free parking for key workers may be one of the most anger-inducing of all.
The Dáil will land back this week after its Christmas break, and one of the first things on Minister Ryan’s agenda will be attempting to charge thousands of nurses, teachers and social workers to park their cars. Is there is a better way to induce anger at a government, already battling the rising flames of anti-government sentiment?
Above all, Ryan’s idea of abolishing free parking shows how out of touch with reality he is. The Minister increasingly appears to the public as if he has never never leaves Ranelagh, apart from on business class trips to Tokyo or Dubai to preach more climate catastrophism to us, the perpetrators.
There doesn’t seem to be much appreciation of the fact most people in this country do not live in Dublin beside the Luas, or within a bike ride or leisurely stroll to work.
Walking or cycling to work is simply not an option for most people, and public transport is broadly insufficient. The push to have us all go about the rest of our lives on foot is one which only widens the gap between Green politicians, and the rest of us.
“Why don’t we make Eamon Ryan go and live in rural Ireland for a while, and let him see what it’s like?” was the jist of one social media comment in response to the news. I don’t think that’s a bad idea.
After all, this ludicrous proposal makes the eco agenda look more and more like a pipe dream, and only brings it further and further away from reality.
At the end of the day, Eamon Ryan’s latest proposal to reduce free car parking spaces will only present hard working, ordinary people with increased challenges when it comes to something as basic as getting to work – to provide this county with essential services. To a growing number of hard-working taxpayers, the Greens are simply middle-class lunatics trying to force us out of our cars. And it won’t work.