Elephant in the room is being ignored, claims Kerr

A Mayo County Council election candidate believes immigration is the most pressing topic with the electorate.

Breaffy man Stephen Kerr is bidding to take a council seat as an Independent for the Castlebar Local Electoral Area in next month’s election. He has been an outspoken voice on the issue of asylum seekers and refugees and believes that despite the limited powers of local councillors he can bring about change.

“At the end of the day, it’s the people who have the power and I think with stronger representation at Mayo County Council you can mobilise people and effect some change. Even holding public meetings and assemblies, attending protests, these are things that really none of our county councillors have done to any great extent,” Mr Kerr told the Western People.

"People want to live their lives in peace in their community here in Castlebar. They want to be able to gain employment, meet financial needs, and have access to services and resources. The current mass immigration policy of open borders is threatening all of that, as far as I'm concerned. 

"Many locals are disillusioned with their current representatives and feel there is no oppositional voice. They've been told that there is nothing that can be done to stop what's happening. But this isn’t true. I believe a lot of the work I've done for the past two years has gone a long way to informing the Mayo community about matters current councillors are silent on," he added.

Mr Kerr said the bread-and-butter issues like fixing local roads, etc, "should be taken as a given".

“You shouldn’t be launching an election campaign based on things that people should be entitled to anyway,” said Mr Kerr.

He has been a regular attendee at Mayo County Council meetings and says he cannot understand why the immigration issue is not top of the agenda every month. 

“I can’t understand why there are not more regular updates and why more pressure is not put on the Director of Services informing councillors on the numbers coming into the county.” 

He said he believes councillors are "avoiding the elephant in the room".

“They don’t want to talk about it for whatever reason.” 

Mr Kerr said his concerns have nothing to do with the race of the people coming into Mayo. 

“It’s nothing to do with race at all. It’s a numbers issue more than anything.

“There are labels like racist or far-right thrown out by people but these are very uninformed people,” he remarked.

Mr Kerr said he believes the people of Castlebar are not being listened to and are frustrated by a lack of vital services, housing, and levels of crime. 

“My plan is to engage with the public as much as possible."