Aontú puts trust in Codd
Rosslare district councillor Jim Codd was selected as the Aontú General Election candidate in the Wexford constituency.
Promising to be the voice of the forgotten people in the campaign, the Bridgetown Vocational College teacher who entered local politics last year, said he is running for the Dáil to highlight the fact that the majority of people in County Wexford don’t feel their financial earnings are sufficient to live in modern Ireland.
He is one of six Aontú candidates contesting the General Election around the country.
Cllr. Codd who was elected to Rosslare Municipal District Council last May, told a meeting of supporters in Taghmon that none of the established parties are talking about the struggle that ordinary people have in meeting their bills.
‘Farmers are rightly protesting because they are getting paid less for their products as costs rise. Fishermen are unable to make a living from working in dangerous conditions for long hours off our coast. Small businesses are opening their doors to pay high rents, rates, insurance and bills, not to make priofit. None of this is sustainable’, he said.
He accused the main parties of offering rural Ireland nothing but ‘platitudes and broken promises’ and said the country’s broken economy has never properly recovered since the 2008 crash.
‘Whether you live in Wexford town or Taghmon, Ballymurn or
Gorey, you live in rural Ireland. County Wexford is all rural and maybe that is why we are one of the most neglected counties on the eastern coast.
‘ There has been a marked absence of real investment in employment in our county and our SME’s, farmers and fishermen have been hounded out of existence with unfeasible regulatons and unaffordable tariffs’.
Cllr. Codd said the General Election campaign will be ‘fought on soundbites and back-patting’ unless someone stands up and asks the questions the establishment doesn’t want asked and offer innovative solutions and new thinking to save rural Ireland.
‘I hope to be that candidate and I thank my supporters wholeheartedly for selecting me’, he said.