*John Hill.
LISSYCASEY’s John Hill (IFP) is the latest candidate to enter the fray in the crowded Kilrush local electoral area, he has said he will refuse to engage with IPAS if elected.
John will be the first candidate for the Irish Freedom Party to contest a local election in Clare when he appears on the ballot paper on June 7th. Corofin’s Michael Leahy is contesting the European elections for the party.
Currently working in a restaurant in Galway where he commutes to from the Hill home in Lissycasey, the thirty year old is also set to become a truck driver. His father is Johnny Hill, former sales manager with T Sheils & Co Ltd who also spent twenty five years on the Clare GAA Executive before stepping down as Vice Chairman in 2010. His uncle is well-known musician Noel Hill.
A vote from his immediate family will be challenging for June 7th considering his two sisters are living abroad and his parents are set to be out of the country visiting one of his siblings in Canada.
On what drew him to the Irish Freedom Party, John stated, “I joined the Irish Freedom Party because they are the only party that is telling the truth about COVID, vaccine damage and agriculture in particular and the EU’s destructive policy towards agriculture. The EU is waging a war of attrition against all farmers on the continent”.
If elected to the County Council, John has said he will refuse to engage with the International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS). “If you look at what is happening up the country, there is a small group of people becoming very wealthy from housing these people, there is no consultation with locals and no warning being given, even to local councillors who are members of Government parties”.
Lack of consultation sparked off the blockades at Magowna House which isn’t located too far from his native Lissycasey, he affirmed. This week’s developments to house international protection applicants in Ballyvaughan and the lack of consultation surrounding it to the local community was also criticised by Hill, “a GP in Ballyvaughan cannot accept new patients because of the influx of people and the tourist sector is at serious risk”.
Given that local councillors are viewed as a source of information for constituents on local matters, the stance to refuse to engage with IPAS could leave his locality without adequate information. In response, John said insufficient knowledge has been passed on to current representatives. “The Fine Gael councillor in North Clare wasn’t contacted beforehand and arrangements were made before that they should have been made aware of. IPAS are not dealing with the local councils, they are putting in these arrangements as a fait accompli”.
On the issue of immigrants and asylum seekers, John said he was not opposed to their arrival in Clare if the adequate resources are in place beforehand.
Politics was not something which always appealed to the thirty year old. “I didn’t have much interest in politics until the last few years but as the saying goes, if you’ve no interest in politics then politics has no interest in you”.
This interest was sparked during the COVID lockdowns which he pointed out “went on longer than any other EU country. Then we went back to normal and it wasn’t until the hate speech law was published that my interest grew again. That wasn’t reported on for a week until after it was passed in the Dáil, I think it was only reported on because Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jnr tweeted about it which meant RTÉ had to cover it then, it is a horrendous piece of legislation”.
Critical over the lockdowns, John admitted that he did not receive a COVID-19 vaccine. “I didn’t get a vaccine at the time, I wasn’t opposed to getting it but I didn’t get it because it was offered to clinically vulnerable first and I had already had COVID by the time it was my turn to get the vaccine”.
For over a year John was a member of Sinn Féin but left the party over their stance on the hate speech legislation. “Sinn Féin are supporting the Government on every policy the people don’t want”.
Agriculture is one of his main issues and he feels it is sufficient to get him elected. “Farmers are doing their best to comply with more and more over regulation, yet we are being subjected to the same, constant baseless accusation that is leveled at us in recent decades by the EU, the Irish government, large swathes of the NGO sector and by our own mainstream media. That accusation is the idea that we are the primary cause of environmental damage in this country”.
Increasing Garda support is another item Hill would hope to improve. “I would lobby for increased funding for Gardaí in rural areas, burglaries are up fifty percent this year compared with the same time last year, that needs to be dealt with rather than policing people’s speech,” he said. “Gardaí are over-stretched but the Garda Commissioner doesn’t care”.
