In a hastily arranged press conference yesterday the leader of Ireland's Greens, an environmental party, said there had been a "breakdown in trust" between the two parties and the Greens patience had reached an end. The ruling Fianna Fail party, which has governed Ireland almost continuously since 1987, failed to get an outright majority at the last general election in 2007 and so formed a coalition government with the Green Party to put them over the edge.
But the government has been under fire over the past year because of its handling of the debt crisis. The Irish public largely blames Fianna Fail not only for presiding over the boom period of heavy borrowing and the housing bubble, but also for its decision to bail out the Irish banks by guaranteeing their holdings and for accepting an EU bailout fund with strict conditions attached. The pressure became so acute that on Saturday Prime Minister Brian Cowen (pictured above) resigned as leader of the party, though without resigning as the prime minister - a situation highly unusual in a parliamentary democracy. Apparently this was all too much for the Green Party, which announced it was bolting just 24 hours later.
