The rift between the former senator Déirdre de Búrca and the Green Party deepened today after deputy leader Mary White accused her of threatening to damage the party unless she was given a senior job in the EU.
In a letter to party members, Ms White dismissed Ms de Búrca’s criticisms of party leader John Gormley as unfair and totally groundless.
“For the past two weeks, she has stayed away from parliamentary party meetings and communicated a number threats and deadlines to her colleagues,” Ms White said. “It saddens me to say that I have found her behaviour to be deplorable,” she continued.
Green Party TD Ciaran Cuffe this afternoon echoed the criticisms of Ms White and said Ms de Burca’s comments since her resignation were “wrong, unfair on Mr Gormley and on the party” and he said it was “important to put the facts on the record”.
Writing in this morning's Irish Times Ms de Búrca accused Mr Gormley of failing to ensure that Taoiseach Brian Cowen stood by specific agreements between the Coalition partners, including one that concerned herself personally.
She said that when she challenged Mr Gormley on the issue last week he informed her that she had been “shafted” politically by Fianna Fáil.
Ms de Búrca, whose sudden resignation from the Oireachtas was announced yesterday, also criticised the party leadership for its “apparent reluctance” to challenge Fianna Fáil on certain policy issues.
“In my opinion, our influence on critically important matters such as the details of the Bank Guarantee Scheme, the Nama package, budgetary policy and the banking inquiry has been much more limited than it should have been.”
Mr Gormley insisted yesterday that the Greens were united, and he dismissed as “entirely without foundation” the claim in Ms de Búrca’s resignation letter that the party was failing to achieve its policy objectives. Other Green party members expressed support for Mr Gormley, with Dublin West TD Paul Gogarty deScribing Ms de Burca’s claims as “outrageous” and “inaccurate”.
In her resignation letter, Ms de Burca said she had lost confidence in Mr Gormley as leader because of problems “getting Fianna Fail to co-operate” on implementing agreed policy, claiming the larger party had “run rings” around the Greens.
Expanding on this view in her article, she says: “It appears to me that the consensual collegiate style favoured by the two Green Party Ministers proves very ineffectual in the face of determined manoeuvring by our government partners.”
Ms de Búrca writes that she is not at liberty to disclose the nature of the agreement concerning herself. However, it is believed to have involved securing a position in the cabinet of new European Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.
Green Minister of State Trevor Sargent told RTÉ yesterday that Ms de Búrca “did express an interest in such a position” and, although Mr Cowen and Mr Gormley were “supportive of that proposal” it had been a matter for the commissioner to make her own independent decision.
Senior political sources said last night that potential conflicts over nuclear power and genetically-modified foods were among the reasons Ms de Búrca was turned down by the Irish commissioner.
Another factor in the commissioner’s decision, according to well-placed sources, was her reluctance to have a person with close links to the Government, particularly the Green Party, as a member of her inner circle and privy to its deliberations.
At her confirmation hearings last month, Ms Geoghegan-Quinn specifically endorsed nuclear research and genetically-modified crops. Her spokesman was very emphatic at the time that existing European Union policies in these areas would be maintained. However, the renewed programme for government agreed by Fianna Fáil and the Greens last October is committed to “declare the Republic of Ireland a GM-free zone, free from the cultivation of all GM-free plants”.
Nuclear energy is described as “a large element” of Ms Geoghegan-Quinn’s portfolio. “I don’t think Ms de Búrca would have been comfortable in that cabinet,” senior political sources told The Irish Times.
Neither Ms Geoghegan-Quinn nor Ms de Búrca were available for comment on the issue last night.