The Uneducated PT Podcast - 🎙️ Ep:106 - The Next President Of Ireland / Nick Delehanty

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

This week on the Uneducated PT Podcast, we sit down with Nick Delahanty a man whose journey has taken him from 10 years in law, to 5 years in the dog business, to now running for President of Ireland. We dive deep into his campaign, his views on Irish politics, and the bold statements that have made headlines. Nick explains the realities of getting on the ballot for the presidency, what “radical candor” means in political discourse, and why he believes Ireland’s biggest problem isn’t housing or immigration but a political crisis. We unpack his views on vulture funds, cuckoo funds, IPAS centres, and the “Immigration Industrial Complex.” We also explore the challenges facing young Irish people, media bias, safety in Ireland, and why Nick thinks leadership means more than just holding an office. From his controversial “Make Crime Illegal” slogan to cancelled talks at UCD, Nick isn’t afraid to speak his mind. You’ll hear about his past election losses, his plans if elected, and why he’s willing to give up an easier life to take on this fight. Plus, we learn how you can get involved in his “€1 = 1 metre” campaign, and where to follow his journey online. Whether you agree with him or not, this episode is packed with ideas, opinions, and challenges to the status quo. #irish #politics #president

Nick Delahanty, welcome to the uneducated PT podcast. Ten years in law, five years in the doggie business, which I absolutely love, and now running to be the president of Ireland. Tell me a little bit of how we got to this stage. Yeah, well, I don't think I set out to run for the orris, but it was a sequence of events. I worked in law for 10 years, learned an awful lot there. I was a funds lawyer, a corporate lawyer.

I was setting up the vulture funds was my job so you can blame me for them. And, you know, at some point doing that, I realized that I didn't really agree with what I was doing. You know, and you kind of got a, I got a realization of maybe some of these policies aren't in the best interest of, you know, normal Irish people. So I didn't, once I realized that, it took me a couple of years to be like, okay, I want to leave, and then COVID happened and that was the biggest catalyst. Then set up a business, I wanted to set up a business, set up a doggy daycare business,

because I love dogs who doesn't. And I got a dog, like a lot of people during lockdown. Guilty. Yeah, yeah, what's your? French. A friendie, what's his name? AJ. AJ, yeah, yeah, they're so good.

Yeah, great. And then, like, I grew up in the country, and dogs were always outside. And once I had a dog in an apartment, because there's a whole different experience of owning a dog, it's like, this, in Marcello is my dog's name, Big Golden Retriever, he's gorgeous.

And like, this dog is now, like, a member of the family. And, you know, he's sleeping on the bed, and he's everywhere. just love them. And then it's like, but city dogs don't have wide open spaces to go run. So I created this business where we bring them out to a wide open field and we, we let them play, bee dogs and then take them home. But during that whole process, I kind of, you know, have all the hallmarks of how hard it

is to run a small business. And I remember it was during the time they were putting in a new bank holiday in February. I was writing around, I looked around, why are we putting in this new bank holiday? We've just closed for four, you know, for seven or eight days over Christmas. Nobody's asking for this day off in February. And it's just like nobody actually that's making these decisions as any interest in small business and what it takes run small business. And so then I decided where I'm going to run into local elections.

And then we had make crime illegal and here we are. I'm running for president. I'm going to go into all that. I'll probably actually just take you back because obviously like our listeners, well, when I say our listeners, I've just talked about myself, basically. Might not understand the term of Vulture Fund. And you also talk about like Kuku Fund as well. Can you explain them terms?

And also like a lot of obviously the videos you do are breaking down them and then in relation to IPAS centres and like how is this all relevant then to Irish politics? Yeah, so basically, you know, we must frame things of the Celtic Tiger and the crash. Okay. So after the crash, the country went broke. You know, there was no liquidity, no money,

slashing around, a lot of assets had completely depreciated in value, mortgages weren't being paid. So the solution they had at the time in around 2012, 2013, was to invite all these big, massive American companies here to buy up all these assets at rock bottom

prices. And they were called vulture funds. And at the time, people gave out, said this is a terrible idea, but some people said, look, this is the only option. And I'm not saying it was the right or wrong thing back then. But we invited them all in, and They bought up everything. They bought up people's houses, mortgages, and that's where NAMA got created.

And NAMA became the bank of all these bad assets and sold them on. So there were the vulture funds. And we can debate whether that was right or wrong. But what was definitely wrong, and this is where I stand, is that we invited them in, but we never kicked them out. And they turned from vultures to cuckus in that they started buying, instead of buying bad assets of underperforming mortgages, they started buying, brand new estates that were just being built, which was like 300 houses in Minut on mass.

And that was supposed to be the house that I should have bought or you should have bought. Or Andrew should have bought. But, you know, they were buying them to rent them back to people. And so therefore this thing of owning your own home became a lot harder. And you were competing in the market against big Vulture Fund. These Kuku funds. They're the same thing. Yeah.

The same thing. Only what they're buying is a bit different. So I was setting these up. I'm not totally against the big pools of these funds, but it's just what they do. They do other things. They set up funds to buy shares in Apple, to buy bonds in different countries. That's fine. But when you're buying houses, it just turns a life essential asset of a home, and it turns into a financial product.

And then, so that was pretty bad. Recently these same structures are now buying iPass centers, hotels and turning them into iPass centers. They're getting loads of money from the state and the whole thing about these structures is that they're very tax efficient. So they're not paying a whole lot of tax. And so the final straw was when they started buying IPAS centers because that's government money, mine and your taxes, going into these tax efficient funds to take up a local resource

of a hotel. And that was final straw. I was like, no, no, these guys, nobody is clipping their wings. You had a quote, it was like, six billion euro being spent to enrich a small group of politically connected hotel owners, landowners and rogue businessmen to house asylum seekers. And I think you used the term immigration industrial complex. Yeah.

So that is the immigration industrial complex. What do you realize when you zoom out at a European level, or even just a national Irish level, that there are massive, of companies, hotel chains, TIFCO, Holiday Inn, that are just making hundreds of millions from this. They're turning their hotels into the, into, um, asylum centers, and they're getting government money from it. And they're doing that by, by basically hacking the asylum laws. The asylum laws were created in the 1950s, the Geneva Conventions. That's where they have their roots. And before, you know, at that time, the point of these was, was, was, was, you know,

was post-World War II Europe to take care of European, you know, migrants that may have suffered under a war, a future war. And that was fine. But it then just got manipulated over the course of the next 50 years and coincided with the rise of low-cost travel, social media, smartphones, and private equity. Combine all those things with these very empathetic laws that want to do good, but have no protection.

against all these things. So if I was, I think all those asylum laws need to be scrapped and redrafted. I'm not saying there should be no asylum laws. I'm saying the current ones

are just wildly, wildly inappropriate. Do you think that's where like the conversation gets lost as people just like kind of break it down to, it's like, oh, you don't want to help

these people versus you do. Exactly. Like it's very, when people start talking about this, they immediately just have a negative reaction to say, no, you, like you are,

you're being, racist, you don't want these people. I'm like, no, no, what you're actually doing, the way the way these laws are currently set up is that the people you're harming the most is the people that need asylum the most. Because other people who don't necessarily need asylum, but would see an opportunity to live in a nice hotel and Dharah and be able to get a job and move to Ireland and become an Irish citizen within five years as a better, better life than where they are. Someone that is actually fleeing war in Myanmar, in Sudan, in Gaza, they're not necessarily the people that we're helping.

We're helping people from Georgia, from Nigeria, from Pakistan. There's no wars in these countries. And it's because they're able to manipulate the system. And that's the core point that I'm making. And so many other people are making as well. The Prime Minister of Denmark, Meta Frederikinson, she's brought. brilliant. She's a social democrat and they have, her party have come to the right conclusion that they need to sensible asylum laws because they need to be able to control, you know,

what's happening in their country. And that's what... This is one of your quotes as well where I was going to quote you. So people will say I'm right wing. I would call myself a Danish social democrat. But can you explain that to the listeners? What a Danish social democrat was embodied? So I, like, I'm not left or right wing. I just want the right solutions for the right problems. And if you were to look at different countries around the world, there's two countries I always come to. Denmark and Singapore. Singapore would be more right-wing because they have a more authoritarian government. They've world-class transport, not great freedom of speech laws and very strict on crime. But then Denmark are very socialist

country. And they'd be more aligned to where Ireland is now. But they have very very strong. very little corruption, high trust, very progressive prison system, but also strict prison system. They have very good freedom of speech laws. They have very strict rules about flags and national identity. Like you can only raise the Danish flag and you know you need permits for different types of flags. And that's just about their identity. They hold on to Danish culture. This idea of multiculturalism doesn't work there.

It's like if you come to Denmark and want to live here, you're Danish. And I'm like, that's great. And they still have an asylum system, but they have a much more strict control of it. And this all happened after they brought in hundreds of thousands of people in 2015. And they had to go through a whole process of clearing ghettos and making sure people started actually speaking the Danish language and things like that. So they experienced how they did it wrong, but they fixed it very quick. And how can we then just like learn from them? Well, I would say what Denmark and Sweden went through in 2015,

we've just gone, we're going through right now. And if we continue at the same rate, over the next couple of years, we will get to just how bad it was or is in Sweden or Denmark. And then the question is, are we able to fix it? And that's where I'm coming in. I'm like, this can be fixed. It's not at breaking point just yet

But it's the rate of travel It's the rate of how things are Are happening and not getting fixed So I think the next five years in Ireland are going to be huge You said, I don't believe we have a housing crisis I don't believe we have an immigration crisis We have something far bigger We have a political crisis

Yeah, we do have a political crisis Because all those problems can be fixed We can fix housing. We can fix immigration. We can fix cost of living. I call it a cost of government crisis. Because what we do, like nobody talks about this enough. We have our government, for the second consecutive term,

we have Fina Foll and Fianna Gale in government. These are two parties that were sworn enemies over the last 100 years. And now they, because each of their supporter base, basically their vote is decreasing, they've had to merge. They haven't fully merged yet, but they've had to coexist in government together. And this concept of a rotating Taoiseach has now become normalized. And I'm here saying, well, this is not leadership. We've had, the office of Taoiseach will have swapped, I think, six times or maybe seven times in less than 10 years.

And that's not leadership. You know, like, they are devaluing the office of Taoiseach and no decisions are getting made. So right now, it's all so predetermined. We have Mihul Martin as the Taoiseach. And we know, we all know it's written down that Simon Harris is going to be Taoise for the second time in a year's time. So what's his motive or incentive right now

is to say nothing. Steady to ship. We're not going to bring down government. We're not going to make any rash decisions because I want to touch the top of the mountain and have the crown on my head in a year's time. And that's not real leadership. Real leadership should be,

I'm going to make hard decisions. If it fails, it fails. but I don't care. And this is what we lose by having a rotating rotating leadership. Some of the reward for doing nothing.

Pretty much. This is management of stasis. Nobody's making any hard decisions because they're not incentivized to you. The incentives are to steady the ship, lay low, weather any storms, and not do anything.

Like, they promised in the last election that they would raise the cap on the airport. And Michael O'Leary, he had a launch event with with Fina Gael He says always vote Fina Fala for this election because he thought they'd raise the cap

they haven't raised the cap and he's still supporting Mairene McGuinness in this election I'm like Michael what do they have to do to lose your support? Why are you so dyed in the wool supporting these guys

when they're not able to change the laws that they created to cap the airport so you know if they're not able to do that then they're not going to be able to do much else because that's an easy fix You spoke on breaking point

In which you spoke about radical candor What does that mean? Yeah, Radical candor It's actually a book by Oh, I forget her name She was an executive in Apple or Amazon And she has this Had this business phrase of radical candor

That on a business team That if you love that team Or you want that team to succeed You owe it 120% honesty And even if somebody is in place or performing well on the team, you've got to tell them what, tell them that to make them better. So if you adapt that to a country, we got to have radical candors, radical honesty of what's working and what's not. And at the moment, you can't say certain things.

Yeah. We had a, we were trying to organize an event and the, the title of the event was, is Ireland safe in UCD? And we had on our panel, a UCD lecturer. And it was all ready to go. We, you know, we had a few tickets. We had, you know, very nice crowd. And two or three days before, we actually had Nicola talent on the panel as well. So it was high profile. A few days before,

the Students Union of UCD who were kind of politically aligned to other parties shut us down. They said we're far right at all this. And they said the people that were coming were going to be troublesome. And it was like, like, people that are coming are political nerds.

You know, like, you know, I'm very concerned people as well. But, you know, people that are like really interested in policy. And we couldn't believe it. We had a UCD lecture on the... So when I talk about Raddle Kandir, we couldn't even have just a simple open debate.

On a college campus, we ended up hosting the event the exact same night in town, in a hotel on the Keys. It was fine. It was like a most dull event. You know, like it was great. It was on video.

But the people that came, it was so, it was like, how, it's embarrassing that UCD would not. not allow that. It is embarrassing. And I want to talk about the media and I want to talk about free speech and all that stuff. But before I even go into that, so like in regards to the things you've spoken about, obviously then you're running for president. And I think a lot of people are like dismissing the idea that, you know, presidents can't change anything. Yeah, Ireland has the president with the least executive power in the world. Yeah. Our president, you know,

has very little powers. And that's, I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I do think we should probably talk about the fact that our president has no powers in the circumstances because we have this rotating Taoiseach. There has never been a more appropriate time to talk about the potential powers of a president given the fact that we have, we've devalued the office of Taoiseach. Nowhere in the Constitution doesn't say that there shall be a rotating T-Shok. So I really am, it's a sticking point. But what are the powers? The basic main power of the president is to promote conversation, promote topics and be a national voice and be emblematic of what the country represents.

As I say, the president is the only political office that is elected by the entire country. That means something. It should be used to say something. And so I'm 35. I'm at the minimum age. I only turned 35 a few months ago. So I'll be the youngest person to ever even try this. And everyone else in the field so far anyway is going to be, you know, 60s, 70s.

So there's a huge gap there. So, you know, instead of saying that the president is a retirement gig, let's have an active president where we have someone that's willing to promote new ideas and be able to talk to the youth of the country. I know what it's like not to own a house. I'm part of generation rent. I have a small child. Myself and my wife have a baby Nika. He's 10 months old and we live in an apartment in town.

And I'd love to be able to buy a house. I'd love to have more children. But nobody's talking about this. And I love a president that does talk about this. Yeah, well, like the idea that you said that they're shutting down, you's having a conversation about is Ireland safe, like to have someone who's president who can actually have them conversation is probably really, really important.

Yeah, and like, is Ireland safe for every? I don't know why they shut us down, because, like, is Ireland safe for everyone? Like, in the media this week, we have attacks on Indian families. Like, they, like, that's what the conversation was about. But because they just didn't, these ideological-driven parties,

it was the UCD Students' Union who were a load of people before profit volunteers or something like, that's what it was written down as. And they just didn't want us on the platform. I was like, we're going to talk about all sorts of crimes. Like, my whole slogan was make crime illegal. That's everybody who commits crime should be punished.

A marketing genius. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're getting attention. Yeah, and like you said, I only seen that as well. It was an Indian man in Tal, I think he was attacked, and then obviously you had the incident on Capel Street as well. So it's like it's happening on all sides of the spectrum. Yeah, it's nothing got to do with race. His crime is great.

Like Lady Justice is blind. And she holds a weighing scale and a sword. That's what justice is. If you commit crimes, you should be punished. But at the moment, social justice, this concept of social justice has gone way too far where we have the Irish Penal Reform Trust or a well-funded lobby group, NGO,

that literally canvass all the politicians to say that there should be no more new prisons, that there should be limited prison sentencing, everyone should get bail, you should serve your sentence in the community. And like, what kind of fairyland do you living in? Like, I get what they say is we should, we should solve the other problems in society

that cause people to commit crimes. And like, okay, that's great too. But you got to lock dangerous people up. And like, if you go to a strict country, name a strict country, the UAE, Thailand, I don't know, maybe not Thailand, but there's no crime in Dubai when you go. Dubai, because everyone knows if you commit a crime in Dubai.

Yeah, like you're going to leave, I left my phone there and I just walked away and like it was there when I got back. If you commit a crime in Dubai, it's trouble. Like, you do not want to get in trouble. And I'm not saying we need to get to that stage, but we've gone too far the opposite way. Whereas, like, someone who's got nothing to lose

knows that if they go into town and steal a load of stuff, that they'll get a suspended sentence. So what? I'll take the risk. You know, like, would you rob a bank if you knew that there's only a 2% chance you'd go to jail? You know, you know what I mean? But like, that's the kind of equations when you're, when you are, adding up in your head.

Yeah, so, you know, when your, things aren't going great for you and you're in town, you would, like, they're the equations you'd be, you'd be thinking of. Is that to do with the Irish Penal Reform Trust?

Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Okay. So they're a very well-funded NGO that has their whole mission of, like, opposing prisons, being social justice, serving your sentence in the community.

And there's only about five or six people work there. There's no diversity. They're all, it's all, there's no men, I don't think, maybe one man working there, but like there's no diversity there. And there's no gender quotas there, but there has to be gender quotas in the parties. So I always laugh at that.

What is there, like, motives to, like, push him that? Because it doesn't really make sense to me why. Yeah, so there's a whole academic field of social justice. Okay, yeah. And there is so many texts and stuff that you can read that says that prison doesn't reform people, that when you go to prison and when you come back out, you're not reformed.

And I'm not saying some of that is wrong. There can be two truths. Yeah, but my point is that at the moment, all our prisons are full because our population has risen over the last 20 years and we haven't risen. But their argument is that our prisons are full, therefore prison doesn't work

and nobody should go to prisons because we're going to commit crimes anyway. And I'm like, no, our prisons are full and people are committing crimes because they know they won't have to go to prison where their sentences are going to be reduced. And what they always say is when you build more prisons,

you end up finding ways to fill them. I'm like, okay, but that creates a pretty, you know, good society, people don't break the laws. And then I turn it back on them and say, okay, well, if you build IPAS centers, you're going to find ways to fill them. Can we take that terminology, at least apply it here as well?

And they obviously don't. And they don't. And they all love, all these NGOs love Denmark. They really love Denmark. In the same way, I love Denmark. And they like the Danish prison system, but they don't actually like the way.

Denmark have actually entered into agreements with Kosovo. And I think Kosovo, and they're sending prisoners there to fill up their prisons because they've got extra capacity. They won't talk about that. But Denmark has some very new prisons where, you know, it's open, it's more about reform. And that's great.

but also it's not the Danish Alacart menu you got to take their other policies as well you know it's all you have to work off the same system yeah exactly and you also spoke about the Black Axe Gang when you were doing that talk as well which I had never actually heard of them before could you tell the listeners a little bit about them yeah I think they're kind of mysterious I don't know

the ins and outs of them but the Black Axe gang there's been a few articles written about them that they are making an enormous amount of money they originate, I think, I think in Nigeria, there's loads of operatives here in Ireland. I think the article said, you know, maybe thousand, maybe more of people that are working for them. And it's not that they're going around breaking into people's houses. Yeah. It's more cybercrime.

Yeah, cybercrime telephones and things like that, as well as maybe other aspects. But, you know, it's a network that has infiltrated Ireland. The guards know about it. There's been a few articles. but in my view it's like why aren't we allowed to talk about this more because it's like they're making more money than the Kinnahans. Yeah yeah that's insane

and do you think like I know myself when I go into town now it feels less safe like I don't know what the statistics are of whether crime is rising or not but it feels like it's more dangerous in town. Yeah it depends what part of town you go to I was like I've had some brilliant

evenings out in town in the last few weeks you know just off Grafton Street people out enjoying the sun and a beer And that's great. Yeah. But like, I did have a few times where we were walking down City Key

and I was with my wife and it was incredibly intimidating. Like all these guys just standing on the bridge and they've nowhere to go. I'm not saying it's their fault. But that's, like, that was my experience. And I'm like, I felt, oh my God, this is actually intimidating because everyone's on your side

and you're walking down through a tunnel. Everyone's on your side. And I remember when I canvassed around City Key last year it was an area where they were just, they were waiting for me to knock on the door because there was someone that was actually going to talk about the issue.

The ladies that live in those apartments in there, they've had war basically. They feel so intimidated. They're scared to come out of their house. So city key is one area and kind of anywhere off O'Connell Street, the north inner city is particularly hot spots because

you've just brought so many new people to one area too quickly. think there's a class issue with that because it's like the people who are going to be complaining about immigration are the ones who are probably directly impacted by it because like you're not putting iPass centers in docket or Fox Rock. Yeah. Yeah well not yet they're that they probably will but yeah that's the whole thing that it's it's these luxury beliefs when you have a big massive red brick house with lovely gates and a nice car in front of it and everyone else on your road has you know Life is great.

But then you're living in town in the flats, and next thing, this whole hostel that used to be there has now become an IPA centre for single men. Like, you feel more, like, it's only natural. And I'll never forget, I was canvassing last year, and I knocked on one lady's door, and she was very nice, and she immediately said she understood what I was saying because she went to Coldplay in Croke Park.

She hadn't been to the, she said, she hadn't been to the north side in years. And she went to co-playing Croke Park, and then she immediately saw the difference. And I think one of the things of why, I asked myself, why do I notice this? And because of my business, I'm driving around the city. I've been, like, I've been all over the city over the last couple of years, picking up, you know, going to visiting clients and picking up dogs and things like that. And you just go into all these random estates.

I know what's going on most people. And other people that kind of, there's a theme of people that kind of, see it first, drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, business owners, business owners feel the pressure of taxes and things like that. But it's those kind of cohorts. But if you're working in Google and you're going from Ballsbridge to Google every day.

Yeah, you're in your bubble. Yeah, it's a lovely bubble. Yeah, it's a lot. The life's good. I was listening to your interview with Tip FM and he spoke about losing the local and the national elections. So I wanted to kind of ask your analysis

on them elections going this campaign. Yeah, so I ran into locals. I had a very haphazard rode into it because I basically only decided to run a few weeks out, two months out, I'd say,

and hadn't got a clue really about what it took to run a campaign. I didn't have a manager. I just did it all by myself. I went up, I printed off 100 posters. I put them up.

I had a few slogans. The most famous one was make crime illegal. There was others, Bill, Baby, Build, and things like that. That was the winner. Yeah, yeah. Make Crime Illegal won and went viral and that was great.

But local elections, I barely knocked on 100 doors. I really didn't. And I was more focused online than just getting my name out there. So I didn't get in. But then I did take the general election much more seriously and had much more posters, had a small team, and still first time out independent, and really tried hard at it,

learned a lot, canvassing is grueling. Yeah, I'd imagine. It really is. You're just knocking on doors all day long while trying to run a business, while trying to run a family, and you don't know where you're going.

You know, we were still pretty amateur. We didn't have, it's our first time, people like, who are you. And so, you know, the initial just conversation took longer because you had to explain everything who you were from the off. So I was pretty happy with how I did

I became the top independent. I beat Kate O'Connell, who's a former minister. But hindsight, I was never going to beat the people that got in. Because they are Finifau, Finna Gael, oh, Finna Fiankel Labor, party leaders, deputy minister for justice. And it's, you know, Dublin Bay South is like one of the hardest areas. So I'm very happy with how I did.

But the reason I feel enthused to keep going, people will say, oh, you didn't win that, you didn't win that. but because of my success online like my reach it's nearly more suited to the bigger catchment area and not saying you're going to definitely win but you will put in a better performance relative to the smaller more focused areas

and you know there's the famous quote like if you knew you were 30 failures away from your goal how quickly would you want to fail so I am not afraid of failure and other people's, you know, I'll say to them, I've failed more times than they've tried. I don't care about failure. Can I ask you, like, can you explain how you actually get on the ballot for the Irish presidency?

Yeah, so it's difficult. You need 20 Orochtus members, basically 20 TDs or senators to nominate you. There's 140, I think, maybe, sorry, there's a couple of hundred TDs and senators to choose from, but they're all party-aligned. most of them and so when you narrow it down there's probably a group of 25 that could be corralled to you know vote for an independent whether it's me or someone else but crawling them we get that it's going to prove difficult so

the other way is four county councils so Wicklow County Council Dublin South County Dublin County Council Tipperary loud you know whatever across the country up to Donegal down to Kerry and so So we're emailing all these councillors, trying to tee up, see who's willing to support. We have lots of people in different councils who are actively really looking to support me because they like the message, but you have to get the whole council. So that's the difficult part because the whole council is generally made up of Fina Fala, Fianna, Gael, Sinn Féin, and the question is, what will they do? But we live in a democracy.

The councillors, a lot of their powers have been stripped. This is one power that they have and that they really like. It only comes around once every seven years. And so they want to see more people on the ballot. I think that they feel a duty to allow solid, reasonable, good people onto the ballot and then let the public decide. So I don't know if we're definitely going to get on the ballot, but we're going to throw absolutely everything at it.

We believe that we are going to get on it. on it and that's the way we're continuing from now. So it's a lot more difficult if you're an independent than if you're with one of the main three parties. Yeah, so they'll nominate their candidates. So Fina Gale have nominated Marade McGuinness.

Catherine Connolly has been nominated by the Social Democrats, People Before Profit and Labor as a combined candidate. And then the rest of the parties have yet to make up their minds. So Sinn Féin might nominate Mary Lou. It's a big decision. That'd be huge if she ran. Fiena Fall don't really know who they're going to run

They might run anyone They don't have to And so And then there's room for independence then as well So we'll see how it goes If Mary Lou runs that will really shake things up Yeah So let's say there was a lot of young people

Who probably would want to vote for you Because of your age and because You're renting but they don't have the opportunity yet Until you get on the ballot Yeah so it all comes down to Whether I get on the ballot or not and that's up to me that's purely to me

the team that I have around me that we've just put around us in the last few weeks to try and do this and we won't know until the end of September That sounds like a bigger hurdle than actually like gathering people

around the country who will want to vote for you Yeah I think so like people I I this is the hardest part I think because then that's the real win because nobody's given everyone's like who's this guy

anyone that you know that's older that's not on social media. They're like, who's this guy? Like, who the hell is this guy? So, you know, we're hoping that if we get on there, we'll make them be like, who is this guy? Does he have a chance?

And then if I get on the ballot, that will just generate such excitement. I think people will actually, I always say that people that vote for me want to go out and vote twice. Yeah. You know? I was like, I'll go and do a five-k for Nick, no problem.

Because they know, like, my whole thing about all this is that, because I'm doing this purely out of, out of for genuine reasons. Like, I could be running my business. I could be, but I just feel that there's a lack of, of competency in political life.

Well, this was one of my questions for you at the end. I was going to say, like, it sounds like a lot of work, a lot of stress. You know, you rule a doggy business, that would be a lot more enjoyable, so I was going to ask, like, why are you doing? Yeah, but really, like, I was out there today, you know, and I do love it.

It's a big stress reliever being with all these gorgeous dogs. And it's a very enjoyable business. and I'd love to be growing it and things like that. But in my head, I kind of know that even if I was to grow my business, like, there's just cost of being in business at the moment. There's not a whole lot of reasons for me to grow because it's not as if the profit will follow the rate of growth. And because I'm trying to get a mortgage,

the incentives are me to not grow. So, you know, you start a business, you go in, the business makes a loss for the first. two years and now I am like okay I have to actually even though it's growing it makes a loss because you can't grow and make a profit it's almost impossible so you're like okay we're not growing we're going to focus on profit and hopefully at the end of year we'll have some profit and we can then get a mortgage and like I'm talking to the bank I'm like yeah but if I kept growing you know I could and I could employ double triple the amount of people I can pay

way more tax and if I could just get a mortgage as well I would do that but at the moment like Last year, we paid somewhere between 300 and 400 grand in taxes. We generated that between PSI, VAT, fuel taxes, tolls, everything. That's how much we paid, and I can't get a mortgage. I'm like, well, I just feel despondent about everything. And then I realize who's actually making all the money in the country. It's people that own IPAS centers, and it's taxpayers' money. So I'm sorry, but I'm actually not sorry for kicking up an almighty fuss about this.

because I'm the one and so many other people who have set up businesses to be their own boss, to go out and do the right thing, be entrepreneurial, and then get punished. And your help and other people as well, because I know I read or listened to another interview, like you hired, you had a bunch of Brazilians working for you. We tried the makeup of our company at the moment

are Italian, Portuguese, Croatian, Brazilian, South African, Irish, obviously. with a few more Irish and it's brilliant. So when people say, oh, you're anti-immigration, it's like, give me a break. Give me a break. I'm the perfect example of how immigration is great and how it can be great. But then I'm able to hold the whole conversation in my hand and say that not all immigration is great and especially when it's draining funds from people that pay all the taxes.

So, so, you know, but other people are just, they can't, they're not able to hold the whole conversation in their hands. Yeah, or they don't want to. They don't want to. Yeah, exactly. And even speaking about that in terms of like not being able to, you know, get a house or just feeling hopelessness and, you know, especially for small business and stuff like that. You spoke about the young Irish people in Sydney who stood outside the opera house with that sign that said, like, give us a reason to come home. Do you feel like that represents the hopelessness that young people feel about the country right now?

I think so. What is there to cheer about at the moment? And Ireland is brilliant. We are class. Let's not forget it. I love being Irish. I love meeting Irish people when I'm away or out and meeting new people.

It's brilliant. I love Irish and I want to make sure that there is something to be proud about. And at the moment it's like it's all bad news. And why is that? Like there's no sense of ambition in any sort of political level at the moment. And I want to bring that.

I'm like, we are brilliant, we are class, let's back ourselves, it's okay to win. Like at the moment, it's like you're not, you're not like winning as bad. People that win are evil, you know, you got to, it's about, there's oppressor and the oppressed. It's like, no, just some people, let some people win,

and then everyone wins. But, so at the moment, there's no reason to come back for people that go to Australia because a lot of them are nurses and doctors or teachers. A very simple reason that for all the training that they get out in Australia isn't recognized when they come back to Ireland.

Like I know some doctors. They're like, I can do 10 years in Australia, but when I come back to Ireland, I'm back in year two or something like that. And it's like, well, why can't we just, you know, like make life easier for them to come back? There's some politicians want to create a policy where they would give a package to builders,

Irish builders that left in 2010 or tradesmen, to come back because we need more tradesmen apparently. And I was like, yeah, it's a great idea. You know, incentivize people to come back. And what about our diaspora? Like, all the Irish people across the world that left, you know, years and years ago that actually still want to feel Irish.

Like give them something to come home about. We had, you might remember in 2013, we had the gathering. Do you remember that? It was like, you know, white people back. It was a way to stimulate things. It was a great idea. And our family did one. We had all these people from Montana because we can trace our family back to Thomas Francis Marr and he went to Montana. So we invited loads of Mars from Montana over. And it was brilliant. We had a great day. You know, we rented a function room in a golf club or something. And it was

brilliant. And they were just delighted to be in Ireland and it gave him connection. But then that kind of fell flat. And it's like, why didn't we tap into that a bit more? Because it was a great policy and so you know we have this diaspora one of the biggest in the world um being irish is great you know like let's get that sense of pride back um you spoke about a little bit about leadership earlier on um obviously if you do win you're you're going to represent the country you're going to be you're going to be the voice from me and andrew um what what does leadership mean to you courage yeah leadership is courage it's about making decisions and it doesn't matter where do you get the decisions right or wrong, but it's about, you know, making the right decisions

and being able to lead. Like, I always just, I'm not, I've never been afraid to lead. I've always enjoyed leading. And I've never been, I've always enjoyed when I know there's a better leader. And I'll be like, I'll get in and back the leader, whether that's on the team or not. And I'm, like, and, like, so it's, it's not like an egotistical thing. If, like, at the moment, I, I, I think the best leader for the country is Michael McNamara. And there are some other good, politicians as well. He's my favorite politician because he's just honest. And we actually

have conversations and we disagree at some things. But I just know that what he says is what he means and he's not conflicted by any ideology or anything like that. He's now an MEP so he's in Europe. So he's not in the Dole. I'd love if he came back to the Dole. So that's my point of

like, no leadership is knowing when to lead but knowing who to follow as well. Yeah. And that's what it means. Did you play teams sports when you were younger? A lot of rugby played Gaelic football, Hurlund, and yeah, learned an awful lot about leadership in rugby and things like that. And just, you know, it's so important.

And that's why it comes from the top. And you want your best ball carrier, your best captain to be out there. And when we have rotating D-Shok, it just drives me nuts. Last two questions I wanted to ask you were kind of a little bit about the media. Like where do you think we were at in terms of journalism in Ireland? Yeah, there are some brilliant journalists. There really are that do great work and try their best to do great work. But the media companies themselves are letting themselves down

because they're incentivised to ignore the reality in so many ways. And they're scared for other reasons. You know, let's play it from their point of view. Sometimes a very topical story might be topical to us on social media, but if they print it, they could get sued for defamation or things like that. So there's a nervousness about printing certain stories. And so I see it from their point of view on certain things. But then overall, whether we're talking about topics,

because you can't get sued for defamation on a topic, an opinion piece. But they, like, I grew up reading the Irish Times. I still have the subscription. I still read it. But over the last few years, I just feel so let down because I really trusted the Irish Times. And I want the Irish Times to be great. I really do. I wanted to be hard-hitting, brilliant investigative journalism, and I want to trust it.

But knowing what I know now and seeing some of the stories they put out, there's a deliberate tilt. And the biggest example of this, the most famous, was the Kitty Holland reporting of the murder of Ashling Murphy. And the victim impact statement of her boyfriend, Ryan Casey, he went into, they omitted some paragraphs from it. And they did that because they said this openly, because it didn't help the narrative. And we're like, this man, what do you mean, the narrative? Tell the truth. We will decide the narrative. Your job is to tell us the truth, not shape what we digest.

And so, you know, they lost a lot of trust over that. And RTE is similar. RTE is very much aligned to government policy and strategy. So we're at the stage now where a lot of government money, taxpayers' money, is now being used to support industry. So there's this local democracy fund where all these small papers get hundreds of thousands a year to report on local democracy. If you're getting 100,000 a year from the government

to report on local democracy, I know what the kind of stories you're going to do. It's going to be pro-government. Even if you feel that you're not going to do it, you're still going to be that percent. And so the only media company that don't take that money are gripped. And people see you have criticism,

gripped is fine, that's okay. But that's free money that they don't take. And in my view, as a small business owner, that gains my respect. I can't Like I feel like once you kind of break that trust It's very hard to listen to their stories again I can't really like

I want to listen to kind of mainstream media But I just I just know that I won't even believe half the things that they're saying now And then I kind of have to go to social media And I know it's like a lot of it's going to be independent So and like you can't fact check everything as well on that But I think like because social media is so quick That you can quickly find out if someone's

Tell them the truth or lie them. Yeah. So, both they're good and bad. Like, you should still read the paper. I tried to read the paper. I actually tried to watch RT News every night. Yeah.

Because you're just in tune with what's going on and what they're saying and then juxtapose it to what's on social media. It's good to live in both worlds. Yeah. I think it's unhealthy to just live in one. And I probably don't actually say that enough to, you know, you should pay attention.

But everyone, should realize that no matter who the person is or what the company is, they have their own agenda. And that's true about me. My agenda is to get what I believe out there. Even though I want to be as unbiased as possible. We all have our biases. We all have our biases. I'm not going to talk about Liverpool. It's very true about social media as well because and then when you like something then it's going to show you more of that and it's going to confirm your biases even more and you get cut down and wrap a hole there. Exactly. I say to people It's good to have another account with zero followers, zero things,

just so you're making your feed more vanilla. And I always tell you, but there should be a thing called algorithm as a service. I wish I could swap algorithms. Speaking of when we were talking about trigonometry before we came on, they actually advertise a website that breaks it down into left-leaning. Yes, what's that called again? I can't remember what it's called. I've seen the app.

I remember I downloaded it and I should probably use it more than I do. Yeah. But I downloaded it with the intends to be as little bias as possible. Yeah. Sometimes you just don't even bother that. But that would be great for, if that was just a plug-in for, you know,

for all news articles. And like, again, what we want is just truth, you know. So, yeah, you just,

you've got to be media literate. And it's a hard place to actually get to. It takes a long time to figure it out who's saying. And in terms of, let's say, let's say you get on the ballad and, and you're pushing this campaign.

How important do you think, you know, social media, podcasts, all that will be for you compared to traditional media? Yeah, I think it's going to be huge. If you look at the election, the US presidential election, that was, they called the first podcast election. Yeah, it was a blind. Because Trump and J.D. Vance went on every single podcast, and Kamala Harris didn't go on any.

No. And the thing about a podcast like this is that, you know, in a normal interview you can prepare five minutes of talking points you can probably part half an hour yeah I didn't say any shell no no no there was no this is just you can get up and

like when you speak for an hour or two hours like that's just your personality and it's what you actually believe and Simon Harris actually went on to the two Johnny's podcast I'd love to go on to the two johnnies um uh good tipperary men like myself but um they

his team asked them for a set of 20 questions. And this came out as a, this is proof, there's a FOI, did you see this? No, I didn't say it. So, so they, they sent him before, you know, a few days before the interview, a set of 20 questions. And it wasn't even like 20 hard questions. It was like, it was the easy ones at the end as well. Like, who do you prefer, Matty McGrae or the Healy Reyes or who would you rather have a chalk ice with or something like that? It's like, you know, the real softball things. So that was pre-rehearsed. And so I watched, I watched the interview at the start and I was like, oh, that wasn't a bad interview. Then I found out the

questions were pre-rehearsed, then I watched it again, and it's just like, oh, this is acting. Yeah. Like, this is acting, because he acts surprised when he heard the questions, and he kind of laughed as if that's a funny question. He'd already knew the question. So that's just acting. And I reject from a political, democratically elected leader. Yeah.

That is pathetic. It's like, it's like W.W.E. Wrestling. Yeah, not good at all. Running for president, one euro, one meter. Tell me a little bit about that idea. Yeah, so obviously, in order to. run for president, you have to have firepower behind you, financial. It costs money.

Not just posters, but even just building a team, you need to hire people. So I'm like, okay, I want to run an engaging campaign. What are we going to do? I'm running for president. The fact that I'm 35 years old and running for present is a novelty in itself. So that's run. For every meter you give me, I will run. Forever you or you give me, I will run one meter.

And so that got off to a great start. So we've raised, I think, 19 grand now. I've ran 15 kilometers over the last week, four kilometers anyway to catch up on, and we'll just keep going. And running is obviously so popular at the moment. Run clubs are the new dating apps or the new social experience.

And so let's go with that and let's start a national run club and run with me and let's run this country together. So people can run which are when they donate as well. Yeah, so follow me on social and I put up posts of where I'm going to be running sometimes it's a bit ad hoc because I'm getting up for an early run tomorrow

but we like to do one or two big ones that are well flagged every week so the idea is we'll be going around the country and we'll be putting up adverts about we're doing one in Cork just join us and you know on some we've had tens of people out with us and some we just had two there's one at 6 a.m. in the morning

two brave soldiers yeah you know got up and ram with me but but the idea is that I'm doing this I'm not I'm feeling every run I go on. I'm not a natural runner. Not anymore anyway. I need the running,

but I want to feel it as well. And I'm thinking, on these runs, it's all I'm thinking about is, you know, the struggle that people are going through and they want something to believe in. So this is a bit of hope

and a bit of feel good energy. Unreal. And is there any other way people can help you and where can they actually go to keep up with the work that you do online? Yeah, so our website is launching soon. other than that it's Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, YouTube. So all the socials basically.

On all platforms. On all platform. Very active on Instagram, TikTok and X. And yeah, join the conversation. That's what I say. And as for helping me, if we get on this ballot, if we get on this ballot, I'm going to need all the help we can get. Up until then, the way you can help me is by emailing your local counselors.

just say to them, look at Nick. Give him a shot. Give him a shot. We back him. The country backs him. He's serious. He's young.

He's new. There's never been a young president before. Give him a shot. And so if you email your local councillors, that's a huge help. Because I'll be contacting them. And so when the time comes to present in front of them, at least they know I've got actual local support.

And then if we get on the ballot, all systems go. All systems go. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you very much.