Independent election candidate, Michael Burke, says he has visited 28,000 homes in his constituency of Dublin Bay North since the 12th of August last.
The former soldier who served with the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in the Middle East, Lebanon, and Cyprus told Gript that during the local area elections he won 1,700 votes in Donaghmede and just under 1,000 in Clontarf.
Burke says that among the main concerns he has encountered while going door to door is housing.
He says that young people with “good jobs” are struggling to get a house and that this is even the case for those who are on a decent wage.
Burke says he is “committed to addressing the housing crisis” saying that “we must prioritise the well-being of Irish people and ensure that they have priority access to housing,”.
He said he had met a young nurse who earns €50,000 who told him that although her partner earns €70,000 the pair are unable to get a mortgage on a property in Sutton where they wish to live.
Among his policies is a pledge to abolish inheritance tax which he says would drain approximately €100,000 off his own home as things stand. He says ordinary Irish people are being “stung” by the current rate of 33% and that this was preventing families from accessing their rightful inheritance.
“It’s a very serious issue,” he said, adding, “The money in your pocket is your business.”
He says that people have already paid taxes on the money they have and that any further taxation on inheritance is unacceptable.
The bachelor, who served in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, said that Irish people who feel they have no choice but to put mobile homes out the back to house family members are seeing “newly arrived” individuals being housed “up the road” before them.
He slammed the activities of vulture funds saying that a house near to his own was bought by one of them for €468,000.
“Other European countries like Portugal, Denmark, and Malta have implemented laws to stop foreign vulture funds from purchasing properties in huge numbers. Introducing these new laws in Ireland would protect the rights of Irish people to buy a traditional family home and ensure those on the housing list or with a deposit can secure a family home first.” he said.
Burke says that support on the doors has been high with many voters expressing that, while they may not say so publicly, they support his policies in private.
“An older gentleman told me that ‘people won’t tell you but they’re voting for you because they don’t want to be called racist,” he said.
Burke says that immigration is also high on the list of concerns voters express and that there exists fear of people coming to the country in circumstances where “we don’t know who they are”.
He said that people feel they are “being told one thing [by the government and media] and seeing another when they go into the city centre and that there is hugh concern about the rate of demographic change in the country.