IntroductionThe Green Party has a plan for Ireland’s future. It is a plan based on a sound economic footing but which also takes account of the world around us and the greatest risks we face - as a country and as a global community. As if the recent past were a far distant memory, some political parties are content to pull out the age old playbook and try to bribe the people with their own money. The people should be wary of these tactics and demand more than accounting tricks. They should demand and they deserve a vision, a real plan that will plot our path ahead. Look around us, nothing is certain. Ireland is dangerously exposed: to instability in international markets, to the refugee crisis with which Europe is struggling to cope, to the economic and geopolitical fortunes of power blocs and to the dangers of climate change we know will happen and are now beginning to feel. Climate change is with us. The people along the Shannon know this as much as the people of Bangladesh, Sudan and China. The US coast guard knows this as do global corporations who must plan ahead. Our collision course with nature is the greatest threat to our survival as a planet and a species, not to mention our economic prosperity. There can be no special pleading.  Any plan that does not have climate as a foundation stone is a plan that is bound to fail. It cannot do otherwise as it will wilfully ignore the clear and signposted dangers ahead. Any plan that relies on fossil fuels as the driver of an economy will see us falling behind, as the rest of the world switches to a cleaner renewable future. Any plan that thinks Ireland can set the course of our own destiny without an appreciation of global trends is fraught with risk. The only plan that can succeed is a truly long term one. Our new national plan puts proper spatial planning at its core. Where we think ahead and plan our public infrastructure so that people from all over Ireland can live and work where there are services and communities. Where we focus on what we can do best at home – in tourism, agri-food, energy, manufacturing and new digital services; where we restore the traditional values of banking to every part of the country so we support sustainable, well paid jobs. Ours is an investment plan for the next generation. This election debate is about much more than the fiscal space. It is about the public space. Whoever is in power in the next Dáil will put resources into the areas that they value. So that’s the question people need to ask of themselves and of politicians as we near polling day. What do you value? The Green Party values our natural resources – our water, our land, our environment. We will fight to protect them and to keep them in public hands.  We value public transport, public energy and know we need public support to tackle climate change.  We value our youth, and want to help them in the challenges that lie ahead. We want to position Ireland so that we are in a position to take advantage of the new world order, not that we hide and pretend that nothing is changing until it is too late. We are more than an economy. Yes, we are also a society but what people can forget is that both of these depend on the natural world. Neither economy nor society can thrive when the underlying ecology is imperilled. Ecology and social justice go together and we need creative enterprise to serve both these needs. Ours is the long-term plan where we think ahead but crucially, act now. We can make a start on this path by voting Green on February 26th.