The Uneducated PT Podcast - #28 Rob Carry - Independent Candidate For Bray West

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

In this episode of the Uneducated PT Podcast we speak about local politics with Rob Carry who runs a gym and a martial arts club in Bray and is now running for local election in Wicklow.In this episode I ask Rob what it means to be an independent, what it means to be a republican and why he no longer believes in what Sinn Fein stands for.We also speak about the mental health crisis in Ireland, the importance of free speech, the migrant crisis and main stream media's bias interpretation of certain events in Wicklow.Rob Carry

Okay, Rob, first question and most important question, why are you running to be elected and putting yourself through this misery? Yeah, I mean, I guess people would know me as that bloca runs the Maitoy, Jim and Bray, but they're probably wondering the same thing, what's he doing, why is he getting involved in this, but I'm kind of circling back to something that I've had a long-standing interest in, like a long-standing interest in, like when I was, I went to college, when I finished school, went to UCD and studied history and politics, got a degree in it. so it was something that I've always been kind of

you know I've always kept a close eye on let's say you know kind of my life went into different directions so I did different things but over the last few months I've just been kind of watching with increasing alarm at the way the country's been run and the way the town's been run and it just doesn't seem to me at the moment like the people who are in decision-making roles let's say have any real hope we've been able to get a handle on the issues that we're facing

and I mean it's getting to a crisis point to mean as I mentioned I run a martial arts gym and everybody's emigrating. Everybody's just leaving the country. And I just think Ireland has gone to a very dark place if we don't get a handle on things. I didn't realize that you did politics in your degree and stuff like that, but I could always tell that that was something that like you were passionate about and interested about even like putting up regular posts and stuff like that. Has this something that has kind of been crossed in your mind for a long time?

Yeah, it's something that I started to consider maybe about two years ago. maybe during COVID, I'd say. I joined Sinn Féin at that time. And I was involved in the party for a while, kind of peripherally, really. But, yeah, I thought that was the role I was going to play, and that was the route I was going to go down. But the more I kind of got to know the party

and got on other policies, I started to kind of, you know, feel a little bit uncomfortable with some of the positions they held on key issues and eventually decided to move away from it. And then from there, I didn't want that to be the end. I didn't want that to be the end of my role. I still felt like I had something to contribute.

I still felt like I was going to be able to help if I got involved. So I decided to put my now forward stand as an independent on Bray West. What does, as someone who's almost clueless about politics, only really getting interested in in probably the last two years and that's probably shows what a state of the country is, that someone

like me is actually getting interested in seeing what's going on in this country. So, but I wouldn't understand what does it mean to be an independent Canada? In independent Canada, it just means that you're not affiliated with any political parties. So at the moment we have like Finigal, Finnafall, the grains, in in government, but then we also have Sinn Féin

and opposition, but in addition to that, you have people that have decided to go out alone and stand as an independence. So they don't take their cue from any other political party. They're not told what to say, what position to hold, they don't have to tow the line. They can kind of speak freely on any issue, they can put forward any issue that they

like. And it's something that if you look at the way the political landscape is starting to change, if you look at the opinion polls, opinion polls just came out this morning. I believe it was Red Sea, and it showed that independence are up to 98%. Now that's massive. That means where there's more people planning on voting independent than there is people planning on voting fin of fall in the next election. And we're

only grown. It seems to be every single poll that comes out where our trajectory is gone straight up. So this line of thinking, this kind of new idea of, you know, people who aren't going to be affiliated with a political party, that aren't going to tow the traditional political party line and, you know, really kind of plough our own furrow, so to speak. That seems to be striking accord with the Irish people. And I think that's what people want to see more of. So here's a question then. So what would be the advantages of being in an independent party compared to, you know, an associated party?

Well, if you're associated with a party, you kind of have to tow the line. So, for example, if Sinn Féin has a policy on, say, the hate speech bill, Sinn Féin voter in favour of the hate speech bill, I worked as a journalist for 10 years. That's completely incompatible with my views. I believe in free speech. That's crucially, crucially important in any kind of properly functioning in democracy. And that wouldn't sit well with me.

So I would be obliged to follow along and tow that line. But as an independent, I don't have to do that. I can speak freely. The opposite side of it is that people kind of view independence as not being able to exert the same level of influence, let's say, as political parties can. But what I've been doing, now I'm obviously standing in the local election. So what I've been doing is I've been getting in touch with our independence,

or our like-minded candidates. And we meet on the regular, we get in touch, we kind of collaborate on various issues. So we're building working relationships that I feel if we can enter the council we can kind of hit the ground running and operate just as well as a political party. But without the kind of hindrance or the control from above that you get

if you're part of a political party. But would you also have then independents who have completely opposite views to each other and wouldn't work or is that? Yeah, well I mean, the way I say it's like I'm a business I run a gym as well as the martial arts club and the way I say is that you don't have to agree with somebody on everything to collaborate effectively with them. Like, for example, I don't know what your opinion might be on abortion.

You don't know what mine is, but we can still work together on, for example, the charity initiative that we're doing here. We can be, like, totally productive on that, get it over the line, run it to a professional level. And I don't see any reason why you have to know what somebody's position is on X, Y, Z, in order to function well with them

on a council level or even a governmental level. So why can't they do that in, you know, fixed parties like Sinn Féin and so on? so forth. Yeah, you'd wonder. I mean, I guess on a national level it gets a bit more complex when you have to legislate on things like the hate speech bill. And there's a requirement to get the votes over the line

and the doll. So Sinn Fah is probably not the best example to use. Better off using a government party like Finna Faw, let's say. They need to get a majority of the votes in the doll to get their legislation over the line. So they have to be able to rely on the people who are affiliated with that party to vote in favour of a given issue. So that's

just town the party line. That's what has to be done. But on a local level, I don't I don't feel that we need to do that. I think independence can work well together and really affect some positive change in the area. I just want to touch on the hate speech bill just because you've brought it up there so when I get that out of the way

and actually talk to you about that and get your views on it. Why would it be dangerous to legislate hate speech? Well, from my understanding of it, there's already legislation in place and laws in place that can protect people against incitement of hatred. And I think that's where the line has to be.

like if you do something that, you know, like I don't think free speech is an absolute, like for example, you can't allow somebody to screen fire in a packed cinema, you know what I mean, and then there's a stampede and people get hurt, right? There has to be limits, right? But I think where the government has gone with it

is too severe. They're trying to protect various kind of groupings in society from any level criticism. And it's just, it's just gone too far. And I think ultimately that type of legislation, in my view, starts to radicalise people.

and start to make people that feel like they're being ordered to say this and not say that. And I don't think it has the kind of cooling effect that the government might like to have, might like it to have. And ultimately, I think free speech is so vitally, vitally important that unless you have an extremely strong argument, you have to stand back and trust the people and let them carry out their political discourse, kind of unencumbered. Well, I can get muddled, can't it? Because what we might have found, what we might find offensive now probably wasn't offensive to be.

people the baby 30 years ago. So like words like they're essentially saying that okay this is what you're saying to me now is is racist or is hate speech where that could be more so your opinion rather than facts. Yeah absolutely yeah and it's like these things do change over time and I guess like in the future these things might stop being offensive again and it is fluid and I think with the way language changes and I mean the government hasn't even been able to to legally define what means by the term hate. Now if you're in a situation like that and you want to just like, you know, just leave it open to interpretation, you don't know what way the courts are going to go on that when they start to decide on cases that are taken to them, you know?

And another big issue is that they brought this in in Scotland and immediately everybody just start reporting cases of hate speech, kind of in an almost joking way in order to overload the cops to, and it completely crippled them, you know what I mean? And they left them in a position, not being able to carry out any reasonable investigations. And that's what will happen in Ireland it's not going to be an effective law if they bring it in and to be honest I think it's on its last leg so I don't see it being brought in no no I want to move on to something that is probably going to be a really important part of this conversation and of you running to be elected and that's probably is the mental health crisis and obviously we know that it's affecting

the country hugely you know it's it's affecting you know even even tragic events in this gym I went through a study last night before coming up here today and in this study on mental health goes the number of young men dying by suicide in Ireland has grown considerably in recent years with the rate from men under 35 years currently being 30 to 35%.

This represents around 190 suicide deaths each year among men less than 35 years of age for every female suicide between 4 and 5 men kill themselves in Ireland more people die by suicide each. year than road accidents for young Irish adult suicide is now the leading cause of death. So suicide and men's mental health is obviously a serious issue in this country today. What can we do at a national level to change this?

What are your thoughts on it? Yeah, I mean, I think without going too much into our own experiences here, I think there's very few families and very few communities left in Ireland that have been deeply, deeply hurt by suicide. particularly youth suicide and as you said the demographic that's most likely to commit suicide as young and male and yeah it's horrific

to see what's going on and when you hear the numbers like there's a story and a lot of broken hearts behind each one of them people you know on a national level I think

like in a lot of aspects of health we're seeing increasing pressure being put on services and I think what's really crucial now I'm not a mental health professional but just from what I've seen

and from speaking to mental health professionals an early kind of opportunity to get somebody into therapy and getting professional help is really crucial like that there's a window there for some people who are in real crisis that things can go out of way for them you know, it can result in suicide

or it can result in therapy now the therapy isn't a magic wand it doesn't make, it's no guarantee that things are going to turn around for that person but at the very least I think young people should be able to expect proper on-demand free men health services. Now obviously there's a lot of pressure. The population of the country is grown

very quickly and that's putting pressure on services and the availability of these services is kind of declining from my understanding and I think the government really needs to address that both from a supply and a demand point of view. Locally I think the initiative that myself and yourself are working on is a great way to try and affect some positive challenges. Can you tell the people a little bit about what that is? Yeah, so basically we did a fundraiser here in the gym

and we are in the martial arts club and what we did was we decided to provide free mental health care to our students. So when you're a member of our club or even if you're just trying to hear casually

there's a number on the wall there if you're in crisis or even if you just need someone to talk to you you can text this number where you can get booked in it's in conjunction with an organisation called mine that's based down and bright they have a number of therapists on that books

you get booked in, you get assessed. It's all happens within a couple of days, and when the bill comes in, you don't have to pay it. The bill comes in to us, and we take care of it. So we've been in fundraisers to cover that. And obviously, yourself and Dave Aldenov and decided to step in very kindly to help generate more funds. And in doing so, now not only are we able to offer our services to people in the

Muay gym, we're also able to offer them to people in the gym. And that's kind of key as well. That's one of the key drivers from me anyway in standing in the election. I kind of mentioned this a couple of times but I think it's what I mentioned it again is that like I want to be able to fund this initiative long into the future and this election is an opportunity to do that

that's what's really key for me if I get this election over the line if I do get into the council there's a wage there I'm not going to take that wage I'm going to use that money to fund this initiative and I think that's one kind of real palpable positive that I'm hoping to get

you know so people kind of say why would you get into this madness of politics and why would you get all this abuse and all My thing is it like, I've got this goal in mind, right? I want to help these young lads, and this is a means to an end. So the abuse and all, like, I'll take it all day because this could, this could, you never know if it does or not, but it could save somebody's life. And that's how high the stakes are for me, so it's not.

Can I reach out another part of the survey? So another part of the survey asked about, they obviously surveyed hundreds of youths, and they asked what would be putting you off getting professional help for a psychological problem? and cost came up as second on the list preventing people from seeking help yet. That's crazy. I don't understand. This is a serious, serious crisis.

People are losing their lawyers at a ridiculous rate every year as a result of this, and it's just not being dealt with. If costs are still being cited, that's the number two. Yeah, that's crazy. And the thing about it is,

just a little initiative that we put together a couple of months ago, and it wasn't even that much. It wasn't even that difficult. A couple of fundraisers and a couple of phone calls. And we're at this stage now where we've got... I think it's over...

Because I've got in touch with a local community centre, we're going to provide the same service to them. We're heading towards being able to provide free mental health service to 600 people. There's 20,000 people in Bray. That's 2% of the population of Bray. In a couple of months, you know? So to me, that speaks to a lack of political will.

But there's no lack of resources. The money's there. So why isn't the government doing what we did? You know what I mean? With a couple of phone calls and a few fund-right, they don't even need to have to fund rights. They can click their fingers. And they can fund this.

overnight if they want to. Is this a problem where people in the doll aren't really seeing what's going on at a local level or caring or associating with it? To be honest to Joe, I haven't really investigated fully the level of service that are out there

and there are real organisations that are doing some great work obviously but at the same time I think when the government seems to get preoccupied and distracted very easily. They're talking about the hate speech bill that nobody wants. Where are you talking about that? They ran two referenda there a couple of months ago that nobody, to be honest, gave a shide about. And I think they got defeated by almost 80,

80, 20. And that costs a lot of money to run them. It costs a lot of money, but it's also a lot of effort in terms of legislation. Like the teams of lawyers that work for the government are flat out trying to draft all this stuff, that's what the votes in the dollar are being put over to. But there's a lot of bread and butter issues, common sense issues that have been completely ignored that could be probably dealt with very effectively by a government that just had its head screwed on and was focused on the, you know, the interest of the Irish people. spoke about being part of Sinn Féin and then obviously moving to an independent continent, what do you think were the initial reasons that you were a member of that party and what has

changed to disassociate from them? Well, I think the reason why I got involved with Sinn Féin, I've kind of always throughout my life, consider myself a Republican. What does that mean a Republican? A Republican, somebody, well, there's different contexts. In the American context, I mean something completely living to Ireland, but in the Irish context, I mean somebody who believes in a 22-county Republic who believes Ireland should be united and that the Irish people should be able to control their own destiny free from foreign impediment or interference so that always motivated me even as a young lad I'm in a I'm 42 now so I was kind of around when the tail end of the troubles was going on I was too young to get myself involved and end of them God now is what trouble but like

it was it was something that I it just stuck with me and and um although I went on to have a career in the media in journalism that kind of means that you have to be down to a centre. There's no such thing as a Republican in the Irish media. That's not something you're really allowed be as such. You know, you have to be kind of some level of impartiality or certainly to present some sort of level of impartiality. But in later years,

I started to circle back to, as I said, and I wanted to start getting involved and I wanted to try and, you know, affect some positive change. Not just, I'm not just talking about, let's, I've got free to order at like that, but just to try and, you know, get that level of social responsibility and start contributing to the good of my country basically. But what I saw, and she, in

was a party that increasingly wants to tow the line with the government that won't stand up to the government and that isn't effective opposition and it was a big concern. Like, like I said, with the high speech bill, the government wanted to implement that and then Sinn Fah and Vaudafir. They're the ones who're supposed to be standing up for the Irish people on issues like this that the government tries to get over the line

that are deeply unpopular. They also back the government on the referendums, which to me was outrageous and Mary Lou McDonnell even turned around after the result came in and said that if Sinn Fah and get into government, they're just going to run them again. to me that's not a coherent brave

opposition yeah yeah and that's why the window to independ's is opening and I'm not the only one walking through it like I'm standing on my own but I see myself as this part of a much broader

kind of nationalist movement nationalist independence and small nationalist organizations that are going hang on a minute we're going to step in here we're going to try and take a role here and we're going to present a real alternative one that won't hold a line

and won't just not along with the government speaking of opposition, there seems to be a lot of opposition on the migration policy at the moment. For anyone who doesn't know, what's happening down in Newtown at the moment? And obviously, you've been happening in lots of places around Wicklow and the broader country.

Okay, so basically we have a lot of people coming to Ireland at the moment submitting claims for international protection, refugee status basically. Now, the government is dealing with very elevated numbers and they're trying to house them here there and everywhere and for whatever reason

they decided to choose a backfield on the outskirts of Newtown Mount Kennedy which is a village slash town of about 5,000 people on the outskirts in rural Wicklow basically so they decided that they're going to erect a number of tents and they're going to put these

lads, 160 lads into bunk beds in these tents. Now there's no footpath to them from this site. There's no street lighting there's no infrastructure. There's not one dentist in the town there's no doctors availability there's no secondary school there's absolutely zero prospect of employment

there's zero prospect of integration and to me I've spoken to a lot of people about this and I haven't found one person that can't see that this is just self-evidently a ridiculous idea now you'd kind of think then well why is it going ahead and surely there's massive opposition

there's massive opposition in the town right but if you look at the political organisations nobody's standing up against it the government obviously are trying to implement it but also again you have Sinn Faye in town the line talking about characterising we had a local

Sinn Féin representative somebody who's standing in the next election in Wicklow in Bray actually like in the day after things kicked off in Newtown Mount Kennedy

talking about how like you know extremists this and you know angry races that and it's like they're trying to characterise these people who are standing up for their own community

and trying to object to something that is very objectionable with very valid concerns as you know some sort of like they're like far right actors are you know they're destructive and you know

they're not to be listened to. But to my mind, these people need support, and I think they have to support to the people. I think the majority of the people of Ireland can see this for what it is. It's ridiculous. It's not viable, and it doesn't make sense. And I think independents are playing a role here now, because we're starting to step in, and we're starting to say, look, if nobody

else would be our voice, we will. Mainstream media, so, I was up all night on Twitter, and I was looking at videos of young lads burst open, bloody noses and stuff like that, and nothing being reported on that. And then you go to RTE and it said how Gardy were attacked and so on

and so forth. Do you think that obviously the mainstream media RTE are very biased in their interpretation of what things are going on? There's a couple of things going on there with the media from being in the media. I'm walking in it like I saw

I got to know very well how it operates and the type of people that operate within it and the reality is that it's very difficult to become a journalist in Ireland. You need to get a higher level education and you need to have enough money or your parents need to have enough money to get you in maybe an internship, work for free for a few months.

That basically rules all of the rural disadvantaged people out of ever becoming a journalist for the most part. Likewise, all working class people in the cities around Ireland. They're very, it's extremely difficult to get to the point where you're going to be in a role in RTE, for example, and you can hear it in the news readers. When did you hear anybody that sounded like me or you reading the news? Doesn't happen. Going to news talk, same story.

Air accents aren't there, you know? So there's a kind of a middle upper class bubble that exists in the media. And there's no migrant crisis in Clooney. You know, there's no migrant crisis in Dauke. You know, these places are absolutely fine. You know, so they're wondering around what, what's all the problem? What's the trouble about? What's the big deal, lads?

Everything's grand. Like, it's amazing around here. And, you know, meanwhile, in Newtown people are really, really up against it. They're really struggling. They're really suffering. And they mounted this protest for the last six, seven weeks. Very dignified, perfectly peaceful. and then on Thursday

like you said the guards moved in in full riot gear and they got the shit kicked out of them and they got pepper spread women injured kids injured old men arrested

this type of thing going on and it was absolutely crazy and like you said the media straight away rode in with oh protesters attacked the guards now I find that questionable

it wasn't there I don't know exactly what happened but I find it odd that there would be a peaceful protest for six seven weeks right and then on the day according to the guard's statement that they send in 50 Gardi,

suddenly the protesters decide that now is their chance, now's the time to get violent against 50 lads of batons and Pevers, right? It doesn't really seem sensible, you know? So, yeah, the government and the media, I think, I've really been trying to obscure what's been going on.

Isn't it funny, though, the way that they'll say about, okay, so you have all these, you know, Newtown protesters, but then they'll say things like, oh, yeah, far-right activists from town come out to cause trouble with the new town protesters, but then they don't ever say anything about well like they don't send in

the local guards to deal with this they send in 50 40 guardie from you know not anywhere or doesn't know any of the local people to come in and basically cause yeah there's a bit of a contradiction there isn't there and I mean I went to the

protest a number of times I wasn't there when it all kicked off but I seen like the local guardy some of them had built up good relationships with the protesters and it was quite cordial for the most part. And yeah, when it all kicked off, it wasn't Garady

from around. Those Garadi that had been, you know, developing relationships were pulled off and then it kicked off. But just on that thing of like,

oh, it's people who have been moved in. Like, we're hearing that from the government and we're hearing that from the media. And to me, that's quite classed also because they're like, oh, it's the Dublin Lads

from Kowlock are after going out. You know what I mean? Or it's the last in Ballyck after going out. And now all of a sudden there's violence. Those two things, first of all, don't necessarily

go hand in hand. The other thing is that there was four arrests on that day and all of those people appeared in court and all of them gave their address in Newtown so they weren't even from the outside you know so it was that was literally a great example of the media

just pulling that out of their arse basically how has it gotten this far it's crazy my own opinion on it is that there's a few different kind of actors at play I think there's NGOs very very influential in Ireland and they're kind of pushing this agenda of

you can't criticise anything to do with immigration right we all kind of see that you know And that I think has kind of set the government on a particular track and I find it very difficult to get off it because once you kind of commit to a position in politics, a lot of politicians don't want to be saying to be weak and to flip-flop and the sidestep, you know? So they're just plowing ahead.

But what I think is really key is that the migrants that are being moved in are the ones that are in tents on Mount Street. So Mount Street is basically in crisis at the moment. There's tents up and down it. It's a shocking side of affairs that it's been able to get that far. So the government is in a position now where they're getting stick over what's going on the Mount Street. They're getting stick over what they're proposing in Newtown

and they're choosing, okay, which is the least worst option. And I think the least worst option for the government is to clear those towns, getting out town looking normal and get them out to Newtown and kind of to hell with the consequences for the people in Newtown. Do we have any, like, case studies of other places in Europe

where, like, this immigration policy just hasn't worked and caused more harm than good to the country? Well, look, I think it's worth keeping in mind that, like, there's there's different aspects to the immigration policy and I mean immigration to my mind isn't inherently wrong by any means and we benefited

hugely from immigration but it was always kept at a sustainable level. It was always kept to a level whereby we can integrate people and you know I think we're at a stage now where it's starting to turn it to something else and when you do look overseas for you know what is going to happen like what's coming down the road it's already been doing in our countries and you can kind of see the likes of Denmark are really rowing back now they've started to close the door so to speak if you go over there and try to claim a

asylum you're detained until you're until your case is heard in the UK do you have the Rwanda plan they're going to start using a toward country to process their application so that the cut off the number of boats coming in you also have Sweden Sweden that basically turned around and done a major U-torn they were very open in terms of providing asylum but they've totally failed to integrate the people that have arrived and they're getting ghettoization and you're getting serious crime levels and like bomb attacks and shooting attacks and Sweden has gone from one of the most people peaceful countries in Europe to the gun crime capital and I think that you can't just say that this is like

okay these people that are coming in are bad I actually in the wake of what happened in Paranel Street when that Algerian lad stabbed those kids I was like looking around and I was seeing his references to knife crime and seeing them associated with people from North Africa and I went on and had a look at the crime stats and I was expecting to see knife crime is really high in North Africa and places like Algeria

it's low it's lower than Ireland so there's something going on between these young lads and these men that if they had a state where they in their country of origin their chances of being involved in their crime were extremely low then they go to a European country and now it's at the going really high and to my mind it's a lack of integration and it's ghettoization

and it's victimisation and it's a it's an us and them mentality and if you can't integrate people that's going to be a consequence of it I don't think these people are inherently bad by any means but there's something about not being able to integrate people because you're at to bring it in too many at them at one time that is going to bring about these types of negative outcomes.

If you even think about it, right, if you go back to the 160 that they want to put in Newtown where you have all these protesters against you, if someone sent me off somewhere and there's a lot of people shouting for me not to be there, my back's going to be up now for the rest of the time that I'm here.

Exactly, yeah, it is. It's not ideal. And, I mean, Ireland has always been so welcoming it. Like, I mean, we've got these amazing, but our Polish community is brilliant. And a group of Polish people come out with a Polish flag at the March yesterday in Newtown

saying, like, this is crazy, lads. don't let this happen, you know? But the problem that they try to make this a racist issue? Yeah, and that's the thing. And it's stifling the bay, you know? I mean, I certainly don't consider myself a racist, I see huge benefits to immigration. It's just about scale,

and it's just about the nature of the immigration that we're getting. I mean, throwing those lads into tents in the field is not a good idea. You know what I mean? It just isn't. There's no positive argument in favor of doing that. And it's not about race, and I don't care where they're from, putting 160,

lads from anywhere in the country, you've got from grace towns, trod them into a tenth, a group of a tent at the side of a field. Something's going to go wrong at some point, and the people in Newtown are going to have to pay that price. So if we were to wrap all this up, first of all,

in terms of being elected, who can vote for you, and what are the areas that can vote for you? Okay, so I am running in Bray West. A lot of people don't realize that Bray is split into two LIA's

electoral areas essentially. And so if you're in Littlebrae or if you're around the town, all the way up to Vivi, all that area, unfortunately, can't vote for me. But my kind of stomping ground is around the gym,

luckily enough, so anywhere along the Southern Cross, and Escarry people in Old Court, down kind of Clarnie Road area, that's kind of Kilmac area included as well. That's the people who can vote for me. So mainly, get yourself registered. If you're not sure, get yourself registered,

tone up, have yourself, and you'll either see my head on the ballot or you want. How can people get registered first and foremost? You can go out to checkterregistered.orgia. It's a really, really simple, straight forward process. People might think it's lengthy and you need to provide idea or anything like that. You don't. All you literally need to do is have your PPS number

on your address, pump it into the thing, and that's it. You're sorted. And what would be the main message you'd want to give to them people who can vote in your area in terms of what you're going to be working on and the policies that you want to change or improve? Well, the first thing,

I'd say is that obviously one of the big concerns for the people at Bray is the number of young men that have been committing suicide. Now it's not a magic wand, but I think an extra hopefully 20 odd grant going into a pot to provide free mental health care

to our young people will be something that I can guarantee we're going to get over the line because it's coming out of my pocket. So that that's a non-negotiable. That is definitely happening if I get in. But there's also what a priorities that I have in particular around social housing, in particular around supports for small and medium enterprises and in particular

around support for our sports clubs that I think they're amazing work in particular in the area of mental health and improving the lives of young people. So that those are my priorities, those are the things that I really want to push forward on and like I said, don't be concerned that like a vote for an independent is a wasted vote

it's not. I'm building relationships with people in Aint 2, with people in independent Ireland with what are fully independent candidates and we're going to hit the ground running if we get it over the line. Is that a mindset that people have about independent candidates that sometimes I think it can be. I think it can be. I think because of the way to

voting happens in the council and also in the doll, you know, people might think one isolated voice, what's he going to be able to achieve? But like I said, we're working together, we're building relationships, we're working on projects together already. So I can tell you, we are going to be an effective force in the council. Rob, thank you. Thanks for watching. If you like that episode and you want to see more content like this, make sure you're subscribed and I'll see you on the next one.