"I'm going to be a b*****x," Roderic O’Gorman told his former coalition colleagues when they said they knew he’d be reasonable when in Opposition.
Perhaps an unexpected utterance by the Green Party leader at his party conference, especially as the Greens are more often told they’re too nice. More on that later.
Mr O’Gorman embarks on a lonely journey in the 34th Dáil after the party was almost obliterated in November’s General Election, losing all but one of their 12 Dáil seats.
As they’re keen to point out, the Greens were in a worse position in 2011, when they lost all of their seats, but losing 11 out of 12 TDs, six of whom were ministers, is unquestionably painful.
It’s not just TDs and ministers who are losing their jobs, but also parliamentary staff, press officers and backroom staff.
Perhaps that’s why there were a few unparliamentary utterances at the conference.
Deputy party leader and outgoing Senator Róisín Garvey told delegates, "We have to stop being so bloody nice."
"We have nothing to apologise for," she said, adding "we’re on the right side of history because the climate is absolutely screwed."
She has a point, but going from coalition partner of 12 to just one TD does leave them chastened.
Senator Garvey said the party never said the so-called national herd had to be culled.
She said farmers are struggling and need help and that the Greens never said people can’t drive their cars.
Senator Garvey said the Greens had to bring it back to the people and how climate change affects them.
A common theme at the conference was that the Greens did not get the message out on their successes while in government.
They pointed to cheaper childcare fees, increased local bus routes in rural areas and lower fares for public transport.
Mr O’Gorman told reporters that perhaps they weren’t strong enough about communicating their wins, instead choosing the next challenge to move on to.
Senator Garvey said they needed to be braver going forward, "that’s what happens if you don’t have balls - you get annihilated."
That’s surely fighting talk, and the mood at the conference was surprisingly upbeat, but the reality is the party will have to do Trojan work to rebuild support.
In a week where much of the country laboured under extreme temperatures, Los Angeles burned and we learned 2024 broke more records on heat, the climate problem remains existential, but either that message wasn’t important to voters, or they didn’t want to hear it from the Greens.
What can they do to bring the public along?
Mr O’Gorman admitted that sometimes the Greens have failed to communicate the benefits of making positive changes for the environment.
"We’ve been advocating for these changes for so long, I suppose we see them as a self-evident good, [but] that's not the case to everybody. And people have busy lives, and they have many priorities, and it's so important for us to show people how we will make it easier for them," he said.
"Whether it's the work I did to cut childcare costs for families around the country… whether it's making public transport more available in rural Ireland, to make it cheaper all over the country, time and time again, we implemented measures to make life easier, to make life cheaper for people. We did that during a cost-of-living crisis.
Mr O’Gorman added: "But these weren't just once off measures. These were measures that will be long term, that will have a tangible benefit for people."
The party took aim at other parties on the centre-left for not taking the opportunity to enter government.
Labour, then the Social Democrats will not prop up the anticipated return of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in government, something which the Greens can’t understand.
Malcolm Noonan, the former minister for nature who’s hoping for a seat on the Seanad agricultural panel, said: "Okay, we're down to one TD now, but I can guarantee you, if we had four or five TDs, we'd still want to go back in there, because that's the only way you're going to achieve anything."
The Greens are also pessimistic about the next government’s commitment to fighting climate change.
Outgoing Senator and party chairperson, Pauline O’Reilly said: "Every single day in government was push, push, push by the Greens. That's why you see all of these things implemented, and who's there to push them now? Nobody."
"So, I don't think anybody should be under any illusions that this will be a difficult, difficult period of government for the country and certainly it could have been different.
"It would have been different if we had more TDs, but it could have been different if either Labour or the Social Democrats had stepped up the table," she said.
There is a lot of hurt among some parliamentary party members, but they’ve been there before, and have rebuilt a stronger party.
Afterall, who doesn’t love an underdog?
