Aontú name Horan as East Mayo election candidate

Kilmovee native Tommy Horan was announced last week as an Aontú candidate for the Swinford Local Electoral Area.

The self-employed business owner is a Family Support and Community Development Worker at the Family Resource Centre in Kilmovee and Kilkelly.

Mr Horan serves on the Board of Mayo North East Leader and he previously ran in the 2019 Local Elections when he received 642 first preference votes.

He has worked prominently with Kilmovee Community Centre social enterprise, which comprises of social housing, a health centre, meeting rooms, Meals on Wheels, a Heritage Centre, an all-weather pitch and laundry.

He has huge concerns about the way the country is being run.

"I work in the Family Resource Centre locally and Swinford and Charlestown are also in our outreach area," he said. "We see more frustration growing with older people not getting appointments with doctors and grant applications."

Mr Horan believes asylum seekers should be supported in communities but there needs to be improved communication and more services provided.

He said a separate important issue is carers and home help and he insisted the services are keeping people in rural Ireland alive in their own homes.

However, Mr Horan believes in the future the number of nursing home spaces will be at a “crisis” point.

"If the Government only realised if they put resources into local communities in order to keep people in their homes and support them it would save so much more money in the long run," he said. “We tried that in Kilmovee, where we have social housing and we support people as much as possible by visiting them most days and even putting on fires for them.”