Trevor Sargent

Infobox Politician
name =Trevor Sargent
honorific-suffix = TD
nationality =Irish

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imagesize =130px
office =Minister of State for Food and Horticulture
term_start =20 June 2007
term_end =
predecessor =Brendan Smith
successor =
order2 =Leader of the Green Party
term_start2 =6 October 2001
term_end2 =17 July 2007
predecessor2 =None
successor2 =John Gormley
birth_date =birth date and age|1960|7|1|df=y
birth_place =
death_date =
death_place =
constituency =Dublin North
party =Green Party
spouse =
religion =|

Trevor Sargent (born 1 July 1960) is a senior Irish Green Party politician. He is a Teachta Dála for Dublin North and is the current Minister of State for Food and Horticulture.

He was leader of the Green Party from 2001 to 2007. He was succeeded as leader by John Gormley.

A committed environmentalist since the early 1980s, Trevor Sargent first became politically active when he joined the Green Party in 1982. However, it was not until 1989 that the Green Party made an impact on national politics, winning its first seat in Dáil Éireann through Roger Garland. In that same year Sargent stood for election to the European Parliament, but was unsuccessful. Two years later in 1991 he was elected to Dublin County Council.

He is well known for waving in the council chamber a cheque received in the post from a builder who was seeking planning permission for a housing development. When he asked the other members whether any of them had also received cheques, he was assaulted by a number of his fellow councillors. Sargent alleged that Fianna Fáil councillor Don Lydon put him in a headlock and attempted to snatch the cheque from him. [cite web
url=http://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0501/flood.html
title=RTE article about Sargent, Lydon, and the cheque|] This is one of the incidents which eventually led to the creation of planning tribunals to look into planning matters in Dublin County Council.

In the 1992 general election he was elected to Dáil Éireann and retained his seat in the 1997, 2002 and 2007 general elections, topping the poll in 2002. Having been elected to Dáil Éireann he immediately resigned his county council seat in keeping with Green party policy on dual mandates. This policy has since been adopted by the government and is now compulsory. Having been the only Green Party member of the Dáil between 1992 and 1997, Sargent was joined in 1997 by John Gormley, and in 2002 by an additional four Green Party TDs.

At a special "Leadership Convention" in Kilkenny on 6 October 2001, Sargent was elected the first official leader of the Green Party. He was re-elected to this position in 2003 and again in 2005.

Following the 2007 general election the Green Party entered talks on forming a coalition government with Fianna Fáil. A programme for government was agreed after over a week of negotiations, which was ratified by 86% by a special conference of the Green Party membership following passionate endorsements of the deal by Sargent and the rest of the Green leadership. However Sargent announced that he would resign his position as leader of the party and would not accept a seat in cabinet, as he had promised he would not lead the party into government with Fianna Fáil before the election. It was a surprise announcement and Sargent was generally lauded for such a demonstration of integrity. Instead of entering cabinet he was appointed Minister of State for Food and Horticulture by Bertie Ahern on 20 June 2007.

Sargent is a fluent Irish speaker and has made appearances on the Irish language TV channel TG4; he has also made an appearance on The Podge and Rodge Show on 10 April 2006. Sargent, along with Irish Green Party founder Christopher Fettes, is an Esperantist [http://esperanto.ie/english/historyEAI/historyEAI(11).htm] .

External links

* [http://www.greenparty.ie/people/trevor_sargent The Green Party's page about Sargent]
* [http://www.trevorsargent.ie Website]

References

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