"The very word Green has come to mean a particularly sneaky, self-serving form of behaviour ... "

Harsh (but true) words from Gene Kerrigan in the Sunday Independent 7th March 2010 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/gene-kerrigan/gene-kerrigan-blatantly-unjust-politics-takes-fun-out-of-dissent-2091284.html

"Take the Greens. Imagine if a few years back someone revealed that a cabal of Fianna Failers was secretly rigging the composition of the Cabinet. Hey -- you be minister long enough to get a pension, then I'll be minister for a while. Imagine if the configuration of the Cabinet was decided by Fianna Fail chancers in deals so secret that even members of the Cabinet seemed unaware of them.

Imagine Haughey or Ahern was caught at that. The ropey alibis and the thick mist of spin would descend on everything, and dissenting newspaper columnists would spend weeks trying to blow the fog away. Today, there's no real effort to pretend that the secret rigging of the Cabinet is anything other than what it is -- unquestionably wrong and irretrievably debased. The very word Green has come to mean a particularly sneaky, self-serving form of behaviour. And the Greens seem cool with that."