Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman visited Waterford over the weekend for a think-in style event, to meet with Green Party members, and visit some environmentally-aligned projects in the East of the county.
The Munster Express caught up with Deputy O’Gorman to get his views on rebuilding the Waterford Greens, carbon tax at a time of fuel crisis, data centres and the huge renewable energy projects in Waterford.
Waterford has had some big characters in the Green Party through the years.
Is there a Green Party vision for Waterford going forward? “Absolutely.
I am here to meet with the Waterford Greens today.
As you say Waterford Greens have a very proud history of representation on the City and County Council, in the Dáil with Mark [Ó Cathasaigh] and of course in the European Parliament with Grace [O’Sullivan],” Deputy O’Gorman told The Munster Express.
“We as a party now are very much focussed on the Local Elections in 2029.
We’ve had a good year in elections here in 2026.
The bye-election in Dublin Central went well for us, we came third there.
We beat Fianna Fáil, we beat Fine Gael, we beat the Monk.
We have a real chance of taking back a Dáil seat there.
“What I have been doing over the summer is going around the country meeting with our local Green Party groups and talking to them about the elections in 2029, and where in their local area they see the opportunities for the Greens to retake seats, and that’s the conversation I will be having with my colleagues in the Waterford Green Party.
“I would see taking back seats in the City and County Council in Waterford as an absolute priority.
We’ve held two here in the past, and we’ll be looking to take seats back,” said Deputy O’Gorman.
“I started my political journey in local authority, I know it’s importance.
Particularly with an amalgamated City and County Council like you have here in Waterford.
Making sure that the public transport measures put in place in the City are delivered, making sure the housing that was meant to follow that actually follows through.
Having strong Green voices at local authority level are really important there.” In terms of winning back seats, is Carbon Tax a hard sell when fuel is already so expensive? “The reason fuel is expensive right now isn’t the carbon tax.
The reason fuel is expensive is because we are massively dependant on oil and gas and their prices have been spiked by a global war, the war in Iran,” Deputy O’Gorman replied.
“The carbon tax is the only part of our taxation system where the money that comes in is ring-fenced and is used directly to help us break free from that dependence on fossil fuels.
If the government interfere on the carbon tax this year it will mean fewer houses get retrofitted next year, it will mean fewer people get low cost solar panels on their homes.
It will mean people are left more vulnerable to the next spike in energy crisis.
“In the last two years we’ve had two cost of living crisis’s, both of them have been solely driven by the cost of oil and gas.
The war in Ukraine driving the first, the war in Iran driving the second.
Other European countries after the Ukraine war changed the makeup of their energy system, they leaned into renewables.
We haven’t gone far enough here in Ireland to do that yet, both at a national level and particularly in terms of what we can do for each household in the country so we can make sure that they can have solar panels, so they can have free energy half the year, and they have the battery to store it, that they have a retro fit so they are not wasting so much heat in the winter.
“Those are the steps.
There is a cost to those steps absolutely.
What frustrates me over this summer is that the government have spent €1.3 billion on short-term excise cuts [reductions in fuel tax after....
