Mayo election candidate slams Green Party leader over 'total lunacy' of policy

Westport Municipal District council candidate Chris Maxwell is calling on incoming Taoiseach Simon Harris to prioritise rural housing planning guidelines immediately.

Independent candidate Maxwell believes a sustainable rural housing policy needs to be formulated to encourage our sons and daughters and grandchildren to either stay or return to their rural farms or villages to ensure the survival and future of rural Ireland.

Maxwell continued by saying: “Surely a Taoiseach from rural County Wicklow who served on Wicklow County Council understands the plight of people trying to get planning for one-off housing?”

Maxwell took aim at what he feels is “total lunacy” from the Green Party over their plans for rural Ireland.

If Simon Harris is telling farmers that he will continue to back and champion rural Ireland and the agricultural sector, he will bin the draft plan being promoted by Green Party Minister Eamon Ryan and the Department of Transport.

A draft plan on cutting emissions in the transport sector would see the construction of rural housing discouraged through taxation measures, as per a leaked cabinet report.

Chris Maxwell, a farmer in west Mayo, has said: “Eamon Ryan has stopped us using our peat briquettes and selling turf, but it is okay to import it by the boat load from foreign lands and transport it by truck around Ireland to burn in our fireplaces.”

In the middle of a housing crisis trying to stop our young people from building on their sites in rural Ireland, many who emigrated to earn the price of building a home show how out of touch he and this government are.

“I hope the people of Ireland let the three government parties feel their rage and disgust in the upcoming local and European elections as they did in the last ridiculous referendum that they tried to fool us with,” he concluded.