FORMER GREEN PARTY leader Eamon Ryan has said that political attacks and hate on social media “never impinged on real life”, saying that his personal relationships with people from outside of Dublin are intact despite accusations from opponents that he is against rural Ireland.

In a wide-ranging interview with journalists before Christmas, the outgoing climate minister also said that, in hindsight, the Green Party should have “kicked back” more against hate and disinformation that was levelled against it during its time in Government. 

Ryan said he regrets any remarks that might have fed into the idea that there is a divide between environmentalists and people living in rural areas.

“I’ll hold my hands up. There are things I said, which I regret now, that maybe fed into an existing trope of Greens versus rural Ireland that I don’t believe is true,” he said.

“It’s such an easy trope to fall into that I think I’d be all the more guarded trying to avoid that. You talk about reintroducing wolves, for instance, which has a real logic to it, but that scared a lot of horses. I was on an early morning TV show where I was talking about car sharing and that was read as, ‘you want us to get out of our cars in rural Ireland’. That did real damage looking back,” he reflected.

He added, though, that you also “have to be careful not to be too careful” or risk being too guarded in “everything you say”. 

During their time in Government, the Greens faced political and personal pushback that sometimes went far beyond criticism of their policies, escalating to abuse on social media and in real life.

In November, the party’s current leader Roderic O’Gorman was assaulted during the election campaign.

In hindsight, Ryan said the Greens should have perhaps pushed back harder against some of the hate that they received.

“Maybe one of the lessons is, to certain extent, that we might have kicked back a bit more,” he said.

He recalled having an office near Kerry TD Danny Healy Rae while he was in opposition, saying that Healy-Rae “speaks like my grandfather, who lived with me for 15 years… hearing him was like being at home for me”.

“I was on very good terms with him. I still am. But to a certain extent, I think it served their purposes to go on the attack. To a certain extent, I let that go, because I know Danny, we’re still on good terms, it’s not personal.

“I felt that, in the last five years in particular, yes, you’d be attacked – but I spent a lot of time in rural Ireland. I have friends right around the country. So you might be getting attacked on social media but it didn’t ever stop me having a pint with a friend in Donegal or Connemara. It never really impinged on real life,” Ryan said.

If a friend in real life was disappointed and personally upset by something, then you’d be stopped in your tracks, but that wasn’t my experience in personal engagements.

“I think in hindsight, maybe we should have kicked back a bit more and say, hold on a second, this is absolute rubbish. But the problem you have is that if you spend your time fighting back against narratives, then you’re not spending your time speaking about what you want to speak about, you’re just spending your whole time on the defensive. I felt, just speak your truth and don’t be reactive,” he said.

Discussing the level of abuse on social media platforms, Ryan said he noticed from around 2020 a rise of “rogue individuals” and what he believes to be a “coordinated campaign” of hate.

He said those people are not representative of society at large but that they do “poison the well of public thinking about you”.

“I’ve never, ever blocked anyone, personally, except one person, because this guy started going after me relentlessly. I remember two or three days after my father died, this person posted something really derogatory about my father. That was the only person I’ve ever blocked, because that went way beyond anything that’s acceptable.”

The antidote to hate and disinformation on social media, he said, is investing more in traditional media, especially local media, adding that the outgoing government should have made stronger decisions about funding for media.