So Ciaran Cuffe, the man who likes to think of himself as the conscience of the Green Party, wants the world to know that he still regards his Fianna Fail colleagues as "gobshites".

Or so it appears, but at least his party have picked up a few tricks from their coalition partners during their first two years in Government.

Over the last few days the Greens have been talking out of both sides of their mouth in a manner that even the most cynical FF-er might think was insulting the public's intelligence.

It started in the Seanad on Tuesday night, when the two Green senators abstained on Dermot Ahern's controversial new criminal justice bill.

Eamon Ryan then let it be known that he'd fought bravely with the minister for justice to secure "significant changes" to the crime legislation on data retention published earlier this week.

The PR campaign continues today with Cuffe's colourful interview in Hot Press, where he ominously declares that there needs to be a bit more "creative tension" in the relationship between the two Government parties. Naturally enough, the Greens insist that all this shape-throwing has nothing to do with the party's special convention on Saturday, their first gathering since the local and European elections drubbing that left them with just three councillors in the entire country.

The conference in Dublin's Hilton hotel will have two main purposes.

First, John Gormley needs to secure a two-thirds majority in favour of a Yes vote in the Lisbon treaty referendum, so that the Greens won't be left on the sidelines as they were last time.

Second, the party will discuss what they want to get out of the forthcoming review of the Programme for Government -- in the uncomfortable knowledge that over 90pc of Green voters think the coalition is doing a lousy job.

The play-acting of the last few days is clearly designed to send out a message that while the Greens may be clinging on to power, they're still fighting for their own agenda and won't allow FF to destroy them like the PDs.

As a political tactic it's sound enough -- but unfortunately, the execution has been distinctly cack-handed.

It literally makes no sense for senators Dan Boyle and Deirdre de Burca, both of whom were appointed rather than elected to the Seanad and were humiliated when they ran for the European parliament last month, to abstain on a bill that their own ministers agreed around the cabinet table and voted for in the Dail.

Tensions

If they had some kind of principled objection to the Government's new anti-gangland measures, they should have had the decency to make them publicly known.

Instead they've merely succeeded in sending out a dangerous message that the Greens are wobbly on the whole issue of crime -- dangerous because all the evidence suggests that this is a bill the public wants to see passed right away.

That's not to say there aren't real tensions in Government Buildings, many of them to do with the recent flurry of legislation being pushed through by Dermot Ahern.

The justice minister has repeatedly kicked sand in the Greens' faces, slashing the budget of the Equality Authority, introducing a new crime of blasphemous libel and a civil partnership bill that stops short of recognising gay marriage.

On all these issues, the Greens privately grumble that their input has been totally ignored.

If the "bootboy from Dundalk" somehow winds up as the next leader of FF (not as unlikely as it might have seemed this time six months ago), it's hard to see this coalition lasting a wet week.

For now, however, the Greens have no choice but to hang in there and fight their corner as best they can.

With the full horrors of An Bord Snip unveiled, no Government party in their right minds should want to face the electorate again until it's absolutely unavoidable. Gobshites or no gobshites.