Magic Mushroom Smoothies & F1 Chair Racing: Inside Eamon Ryan’s Advisor Meetings

WITH A combined salaries amounting to €730k between them, WWN visits Eamon Ryan’s advisors at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications in a bid to figure out who’s behind the Green Party leader’s regular stream of batshit crazy and tone deaf suggestions which continually irk the Irish nation.

Advised by our handlers to ‘wear something casual’, we’re immediately met at the door by an octet of young professionals brandishing large water guns who don’t hesitate in spraying us and giggling riotously.

“Ha-ha got ye, welcome to team Green Party,” one ecstatic young woman said, welcoming us, “this is what we normally do to greet visitors – aren’t we gas out? The Green Party is so different and fresh. We’re not like the other parties”.

Drying ourselves down and entering, we’re hushed by one of the team, “shhh, Eamo is having a little nappy whappy”, as we pass an office door with a road sign hanging from it saying, ‘No Entry’. We’re told Eamon sleeps most days and is only woken for press interviews or to attend the Dáil – thus explaining his constant woolly head and chronically gooey bloodshot eyes.

We’re offered tea, but also offered a brown speckled drink which we’re told is a Magic Mushroom Smoothie, something kept on constant supply at the GP HQ.

“It keeps our minds fresh and creative; I’m sure you’re familiar with our work,” the suspected leader of the group explained, before sculling an entire glass.

Indeed, we were very aware of their work; the wolves, voting for CETA despite previously disagreeing to it, using the n-word in the Dáil, the ridiculous suggestions to simply drive slower to save fuel, grow lettuce on your windowsill and more recently, take shorter showers to save energy – in fact, it was the whole reason we were there.

“We usually start our meetings with a chair race around the office and the winner gets to pick Eamon’s next lines to the public,” we’re told as the 4 men and 4 women donned motorbike helmets and began darting around the office imitating the noise of car accelerating and braking while we read some of their suggested lines on the whiteboard behind.

‘Everyone remove one lung to cut down on CO2’, ‘Hang tea bags on the washing line’, ‘Everyone wear one of those little hats with a propeller on the top and become a mobile human wind turbine’; their list of suggestions were shocking, but no surprise.

With my colleague now miscounting their laps in a bid to keep them distracted, I rubbed out and replaced the suggestions with some of my own in the hopes of saving what should be Ireland’s premiere party for the environment: ‘Stop paying idiots €80k each to give you terrible advice’, ‘Vote no on Dáil bills that actually go against your party’s policies’, ‘Get a decent night’s sleep’, ‘Stop patronising your handful of voters’, ‘Grow a pair of balls’, ‘Realise taxes don’t save the environment, action does’, ‘Pull your head out of your fucking hoop’ and ‘prepare to be decimated in the next election’.

Ending their little race, we told the now extremely high advisors that it was an eight-way tie. However, they were now distracted, writing up a report for Ryan explaining why Dublin’s Metrolink should be abandoned in favour of an office chair greenway.