One of many hints in this direction was the presence of Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary at the launch of a Fine Gael candidate’s campaign, where the audience lapped up his call to “weed out the Greens”. O’Leary had spent years denigrating transport minister, Eamon Ryan, so his presence at a party event signalled it was officially open season on the Greens.

Paradoxically, around one in three Irish people claim to be “alarmed” about climate change, according to research produced by the EPA, yet in the lead-in to the election, fewer than 4% indicated this would be a critical issue in terms of voting.

All politics is, after all, local. It’s quite the statistic to consider that, in the midst of a rapidly deteriorating global climate crisis, only one in 25 people in Ireland are prepared to even consider casting a vote for the only party for whom climate is their core focus.

Former Fine Gael deputy leader Simon Coveney, who masterminded the environmentally ruinous industrial expansion of the dairy sector, noted that historians would praise the Greens for pushing climate change onto the mainstream political agenda. This is undoubtedly true, but will be cold comfort to those TDs who have just been ousted.

Having previously recovered, Lazarus-style, from electoral obliteration, the smart play in 2020 for the 12 Green TDs would have been to sit on the Opposition benches and make political capital by ridiculing the government on its dire environmental performance. 

Instead, as its leader and sole surviving TD, Roderic O’Gorman noted: “You get political capital and you spend it.”

While this may seem hard for some in media and politics to countenance, the Greens are far more focused on protecting the environment than preserving their seats. In signing up for coalition government four years ago, most of its TDs knew they would in all probability be signing their own political death warrants, but they went ahead anyway.

From my reading of the manifestos of the three largest political parties, the bad news is that, eco rhetoric notwithstanding, none of them have even begun to grasp the nettle of progressive, let alone radical, climate action. On the campaign trail, Taoiseach Simon Harris repeated the phrase “the planet is on fire”, to the point where he completely drained it of all meaning.

The good news is that both the Social Democrats and Labour have placed environmental protection and climate action at the centre of their political agendas. 

SocDem leader Holly Cairns is also a farmer, but one prepared to stand up to the industrial livestock lobby. Her party backs phasing out the nitrates derogation, as well as reviving horticulture, expanding organics, incentivising herd reduction and supporting farmers in less polluting and more sustainable forms of agriculture. 

Party colleague Jennifer Whitmore confirmed on Sunday that climate was a “red line issue” for the party.

Few doubt that Labour, under Ivana Bacik, is serious about the climate emergency, and keen to put the forgettable performance of Alan Kelly as environment minister in the mid-2010s behind them. 

Bacik was also generous in lauding what she called the tenacity of the Greens in the outgoing government, adding that Labour is “passionate” about climate action.

With FF/FG likely to have more than 85 seats in the next Dáil, they are clearly within touching distance of power but will need to partner with either one or both of the smaller left-leaning parties or else look to like-minded independents, some of whom have built their careers on doggedly opposing environmental action.

Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been happy to take the credit for climate action in recent years, and equally keen to let the Greens take the blame for the painful measures. It would be a profound betrayal on the part of both Simon Harris and Micheál Martin were they not to build a coalition featuring parties committed to progressive environmental agendas.

The new Dáil will be much the poorer for not featuring Eamon Ryan, arguably the most influential politician of the last decade, as well as Malcolm Noonan who excelled in nature protection. Some say the Greens weren’t radical enough, yet Neasa Hourican of the party’s radical left fared no better than the centrists. 

As Senator Róisín Garvey reminded us over the weekend: “As Kermit the Frog used to say, it’s hard being Green”.

• John Gibbons is an environmental journalist and commentator