New Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman is already a veteran campaigner at 42
Roderic O’Gorman, at 42, is a relatively young party leader, but he has almost a lifetime’s experience with the Green Party.
The son of a popular GP from Mulhuddart, O’Gorman first became involved with the Greens at the age of 10 in 1992 when he canvassed for Trevor Sargent, who won a seat in Dublin North. A committed activist since his teenage years, he was a founder of the Young Greens and has filled many roles in the party, including being chair for nine years between 2011 and 2020.
He was first elected as a councillor in 2014 on Fingal County Council. He stood unsuccessfully for the Dáil three times before making an electoral breakthrough in 2020.
O’Gorman studied law at TCD, completed a postgraduate degree at the London School of Economics, before returning to Trinity to complete a PhD. He worked for a period for an organisation advocating Traveller rights but most of his working career was in academia, firstly in Griffith College and more latterly in DCU.
At a time when it was not a non-issue he felt compelled to tell party colleagues that he was gay before first standing as a candidate for a council election. He has said that his academic work as well as his involvement with Travellers’ rights, the gay rights movement, and other civil society organisations widened the spectrum of his core principles beyond climate change and biodiversity to equality and social justice. He married his long-term partner Ray Healy in 2023.
O’Gorman will try to broaden the remit of the party but he is seen as a continuity candidate, a “safe pair of hands” as one colleague said on Monday. His four years as Minister for Children and Integration in a very difficult department (especially dealing with Ukrainian refugees and rising numbers of international protection applicants) has made him a tougher politician, more capable of saying “no”. He has set himself the mission of bringing the party back to close to its 2020 support levels. His big challenge is he has only months to do so.
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