PEOPLE Party as the party of environmental concern. Party co-founder Tony Whittaker noted in an interview with Derek Wall '… voters did not connect PEOPLE with ecology. What I wanted was something that the media could look up in their files so that, when they wanted a spokesman of the issue of ecology, they could find the Ecology Party and pick up the phone. It was as brutal and basic as that. PEOPLE didn't communicate what we had hoped it would communicate'. Derek Wall, in his history of the Green Party, contends that the new political movement focused initially on the theme
Green Party (Ireland) regional branch of the party the previous year. It currently has two representatives in the Assembly. The party's first electoral outing was at the November 1982 general election when seven candidates contested under the "Ecology Party" banner, winning 0.2% of the vote. Following a name change, it contested the 1984 European elections, with party founder Roger Garland winning 1.9% in the Dublin constituency. The following year, it won its first election when Marcus Counihan was elected to Killarney Urban District Council at the 1985 local elections. The party nationally ran 34 candidates and won 0.6% of the vote. The party