London/Dublin - Ireland's governing platform won approval Saturday from the Green Party, keeping the country's centre-left coalition intact. The Green Party met Saturday in Dublin to decide whether to remain in coalition with Prime Minister Brian Cowen's Fianna Fail, the senion party in the coalition.
Failure to achieve a two-thirds majority for the new governing agreement, reached Friday between Cowen and Greens leader John Gormley, would have forced new elections.
Amid Ireland's ongoing financial crisis, the new governing agreement was approved by 84 per cent of Green Party delegates, voting 523-99 behind closed doors. The measure had been in doubt until earlier Saturday, and defeat would broken up the coalition and sent the two parties - both lagging badly in recent approval surveys - scrambling into an early election campaign.
On October 2, Irish voters approved the long-stalled European Union treaty, a year after Ireland had rejected the treaty in an earlier referendum.
Gormley said that the new governing agreement is meant to tackle the problems currently plaguing Ireland. It establishes a plan to clear up Irish band debts, which have deterred lending and exacerbated the Irish recession.
The deal contains education proposals including the hiring of more teachers, promotes electric vehicles and other green measures, introduces civil partnerships, tackles homelessness and bans genetically modified organisms in Ireland.
