*Michael Leahy (IFP). Photograph: John Mangan
US PRESIDENT elect Donald Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt was the inspiration for Michael Leahy (IFP) to keep fighting in the political arena.
Leahy will contest his second General Election on November 29th but he revealed that he was very close to not putting his name on the ballot paper in the wake of a taxing European election campaign.
Corofin based Micheal polled 12,259 first preferences in Ireland South before his elimination on the tenth count. He said the presence of two “very strong” Clare candidates in Michael McNamara (IND) and “I didn’t get a particularly good vote in the European election, I put a lot of effort into that, a lot of time into it, I was at that for six or seven months. We went up and down Ireland South and we had a very good social media campaign, you know, and we’re quite successful. But, I thought maybe the people aren’t ready for this, maybe this it’s not a very popular position so, I have to say I was disheartened about it, but then I thought better of it. I said, look I have a bit of name recognition. It’s time to have a final stab at it”.
Inspiration was provided from Donald Trump in July during an attempted shooting in Pennsylvania. “I think his reaction when he was shot, his willingness to fight on. I mean, this is a guy who’s been he’s had the full power of the most powerful state in the world shown at him by a completely corrupt judicial system. His own security services tried to frame him on conspiracy against his own country, it was completely false. They manufactured evidence that they corrupted the courts. They wrote the judiciary. I mean, what they’ve done to this man is just extraordinary but he’s kept going. Now if he’d walked away, they’d probably have left him alone but he kept going because he knows that America’s democracy is on the line and unless he can protect, it is finished. Now I said four years ago when Joe Biden went to office, America was finished as the beacon on the hill to protect your democracy, to protect your freedom because it will never recover from economic downturn, and the way Trump was dealt with. He’s managed to make an extraordinary comeback, very inspiring and I met him twice. When he was in Doonbeg last year I shook hands with him twice and we had brief words, I felt what this guy is doing, he still may face prison, totally trumped up nonsense charges, if he is prepared to continue running then I don’t have the right not to put myself forward”.
Ireland needs to return to common sense “to put the Irish people first in terms of our national policy, to secure freedom and liberty in every sense of that term, in terms of freedom of speech, and in terms of making a settlement with the Ulster policy people. It’s going to be coming at us very, very quickly,” he said.
Securing ten percent of the first preference vote and amassing a return in the region of 5,000 to 6,000 votes is the target for the architect. He does not expect transfers to be “terribly useful” in his case. “One of the things I missed out on last time is I because I didn’t get a sufficiently high vote, I was not able to determine whether I was transfer friendly particularly from say the third Fianna Fáil or third Fine Gael candidate, if I stay ahead of them this time we might see if I am transfer friendly, that’s very important, the other thing is there is an awful lot of candidates this time out, when I was looking at the polling in the Europeans with 23 candidates on the list and because it is such a long bloody thing people will just say ‘ah one and two, we’ll leave it at that’ so I think there’s going to be fewer transfers and that’s not going to help me but we’ll have to wait and see, I think there’s going to be a lot of people that don’t reach the quota”.
Caricatures of his posters with a moustache akin to Adolf Hitler have appeared in the county, an act which “doesn’t surprise me,” he admitted. “I think anybody who would compare a party which has entered the fray in order to protect free speech clearly knows nothing about the nature of fascism. It’s a remarkable tendency of the left that they always accuse their opponents of what they do themselves, so when they accuse me of voting hate, I would have to suggest to these parties of the left which are primarily engaged in voting hate and risk, would they accuse me of being authoritarian. My very first input as a member of the Irish Freedom Party was to make a detailed submission on the proposed hate speech in 2019 which of course was not published at the time, it was a very detailed submission and we were the only party to make such a submission. I’m actually committed to free speech. You cannot have democracy without free speech, but it’s very much on the line”.
According to Leahy, the people of Ireland got a glimpse of fascism during the Government’s response to COVID, “that’s fascism pure and simple. I think they very quickly slipped into a very high hand authoritarian mode and in my opinion not necessarily, maybe they were panicked and thought they were doing the best thing but the ease with which they slipped into a very authoritarian mode to me, it was very worrying. I think subsequent events have pointed out that they went wrong, it wasn’t necessary, it did real damage, it certainly did more harm than good. When people a fascist status on me, I think it shows their ignorance of history and their innocence”. He confirmed to The Clare Echo that he did not take the vaccine for COVID-19.
In his role as a planning consultant, he has assisted community groups in objecting to wind farms. “I do I have to say I do have scepticism about wind farms. I think it’s an expensive form of energy. It’s a form of energy that always requires a backup. You can produce your wind farms and you claim to get free electricity out of it. But at the same time, what happens when the wind doesn’t blow. You have to have a backup system so in layman’s terms it’s an expensive method of alternative energy, that may change, there are downstream effects, there’s no doubt whatsoever, there’s shadow flicker, there are noise impacts, there are visual impacts”.
He cautioned, “I think that the move to eliminate fossil fuels too quickly is going to be very dangerous. I think you’re seeing the industrialisation taking place in Europe. You’re seeing the German industrial economic model in serious trouble, and that means European industrial economic model is in serious trouble. I think we must continue to use fossil fuels until we can affect a proper transition. But I just think, you know, eliminating in the entire use of carbon in 2050 may well result in catastrophic decline in living standards in food supplies.
He has clashed with Clare TD, Cathal Crowe (FF) and was involved in assisting an objection to the Deputy’s plans to build a family home in Cratloe. “Somebody came in to me needing help, they said they had a planning problem and they wanted me to help them and I said yes, then they came in told me the person was Cathal Crowe, I said ‘Jesus I do not want to do this because it could be seen as a personal attack’ but at the same time if you’re promising somebody help then you kind of got to deliver it. I’d rather have not been involved in it, but I don’t walk away from things, if I promise somebody I’ll do something then I’ll do it and he did need advice and I was prepared to give it to him, now it’s gone on and on which is a bloody pity but I don’t walk away from things because I’m going to be accused of it being personally, it was absolutely not, I won’t say I was horrified when I found out it was Cathal Crowe but I did consider pulling back with them then I said no I’m a professional person, I have to put my professional obligations to my client and that’s it”.
He defines The Irish Freedom Party as a right and conservative party but disagrees with those who say they are far-right.
Schools have been ‘inappropriately’ used for Gay Pride Week, he claimed. “You have gay pride flags, you have, outreach days for the gay community. I don’t think it’s quite a part of community. You have people coming in to explain homosexuality to children. This is often done at an age inappropriate, level. By the time when kids don’t fully understand the nature of sexuality and perhaps they’re putting ideas in kids’ heads that are not yet ready for it. There is a latent innocence in children, and I think that innocence has to be cherished and has to be protected. But I think there’s a real danger that, by this whole fact, sexual politicising, that that innocence will be damaged or the children will be inappropriately influenced”.
Use of the word ‘gay community’ is something he does not approve of, :communities are geographic. if you say you’re part of the gay community, does that mean you’re not part of the Ennis community or a different community. I don’t think community is necessarily the right word because not all gay people agree with all of the gay people. There’s quite a few homosexual people in our party, our only councillor is gay, we get quite a lot of support from gay people who are sickened by Pride Week. What’s wrong with just saying gay people, why is it a community, I don’t think it is good English”.
His election leaflet criticises a ‘woke sexual agenda in schools’. He explained, “I think it is, suggesting that there is no difference between men and women, that there’s no difference in terms of human sexuality. There’s no moral dimension to human sexuality. There’s no correct human sexuality. Now the nature of human sexuality is derived from the physical presence of the human being. And you look at male and female genitalia, and you get a very good idea of what these organs are intended for. They’re essentially reproductive. When you when you teach a child about sex, you start from the point of view of reproduction. You start from the point of view of genitalia and you develop the regard of express. And the purpose of these is in order to have sexual intercourse that you reproduce. That’s a part of our focus as human beings. The left sort of wants to separate the sexual, that the word sexual, that wants to separate the desire of sexuality from the physical, ontological nature of sexuality. And I think when you when you buck against a human system like that, you’re asking for a problem. And that’s part of what I read but another part of it is gender ideology, that, you know, people do not actually have a sex. They’re assigned to gender by a social construct, and that it’s not real, and that you can change the body that God gave you by simply expressing a preference. I think that’s quite dangerous, one of the things that I see about it is children can get these ideas in their head. Sex, I mean, every I think every child goes through some period. I wonder what it’s like to be a boy or a girl, whatever, every child does that. If they get the notion into their head that they’re in the wrong body and they persuade their parents that they want to transition, very often the parents go along with this to be modern. The children may deeply regret but the funny thing is the parents are the last people who make a bad mistake because they can’t admit that they destroy the child’s life”.
Michael Leahy
Occupation – Architect and planner
DOB – 05/02/58
Party – Irish Freedom Party
Top priority – A new dawn of liberty for Ireland
