Roderic O’Gorman elected new leader of the Green Party

Minister for Children and Integration Roderic O’Gorman has been elected as the new leader of the Green Party after winning the support of a narrow majority of the members over Pippa Hackett.

Mr O’Gorman won by 984 votes to 912 for the senator.

He becomes the fourth leader in the party’s history and succeeds Minister for Climate Change and Transport Eamon Ryan who announced last month he was standing down from the role.

Mr O’Gorman said he was “deeply humbled and deeply grateful” and paid tribute to Mr Ryan and outgoing deputy leader Catherine Martin, who he said had “guided our party back from its lowest point in 2011″.

Members of the party had been voting online since last Thursday until the poll closed at 6pm on Sunday. A total of 1,896 votes were cast out of an eligible membership of 3,425.

Speaking to the media after the announcement of his victory, Mr O’Gorman said he would not be implementing a reshuffle of Green ministers – meaning that Mr Ryan and Ms Martin will remain in Cabinet in their current posts.

“I am extremely confident in the expertise and the knowledge and the ability of our Cabinet Ministers and our junior ministers. They have all done amazing work in their individual departments,” he said.

Ms Hackett and the other Green junior ministers – Malcolm Noonan, Ossian Smyth and Joe O’Brien – will also remain in their current posts

He also denied that the party was divided because of his narrow margin of victory over Senator Hackett.

He said that narrow margins were not unusual for Green Party internal elections and the tight result reflected the very “constructive debate” that had happened during the leadership campaign.

[ Should the Green Party enter an alliance with other like-minded parties? Roderic O’Gorman and Pippa Hackett debate ]

[ Green Party leadership pitches: social justice focus versus appeal to rural Ireland ]

The new leader also said that he would more directly tackle false claims being made by Opposition TDs on climate change, biodiversity, integration and asylum seekers.

“The degree of stuff being made up is deeply frustrating,” he said. “I will deal with those (who make false claims). Claims must be on the basis of fact rather on something somebody has read on (social media),” he said.

Mr O’Gorman, a former chairman of the party, has been a TD for Dublin West since 2020 after being first elected as a county councillor in 2014.

He based his campaign on widening the appeal of the party beyond traditional Green values and placing more emphasis on policies around social justice and equality, without moving from the party’s core environmental principles.

Ms Hackett was first elected to Offaly County Council in 2019 and was elected to the Seanad in 2020, after an unsuccessful bid for a Dáil seat.