General Election Interview: Dr Ronan Cleary, Aontú
Dr Ronan Cleary is contesting the General Election in Waterford for Aontú. Photo: Hugh Dooley
Dr Ronan Cleary is contesting the General Election in Waterford for Aontú.
The General Practitioner and Tramore resident has criticised the government's spending as "inefficient" and supports his party's policy to improve efficiency in government spending by adding another junior minister to the department of the Taoiseach, but would this add more expense and bureaucracy to decision-making and cost analysis decrease government efficiency? Cleary disagreed, saying he believes that a junior minister with responsibility for the efficient spending of public money would "concentrate the minds of civil service, senior civil servants, but also ministers holding the different portfolios."
Cleary's party has pointed to the 31 people in the International Protection Procurement Service as understaffed and seeks to create an expanded Border Agency of the same magnitude as Lithuania’s 4,000-person agency, which at the average public sector salary (€52,000) could cost the Irish taxpayer more than €200,000,000 every year, based on CSO figures. Dr Cleary believes this would be a worthwhile investment into the country's control of its borders.
Having been the Chair of Doctors for Life through the abortion referendum, Dr Cleary opposed the referendum but said that "nobody is proposing now that we go back to the days when the eighth amendment was in place".
"That's not to say that, if there was a referendum again tomorrow, I wouldn't campaign on a pro-life issue," he said.
"I think it's about limiting the damage of the removal of the Eighth Amendment. It's about putting pro-life policies in place. So nobody has to have an abortion due to socio-economic circumstances."
He wants to "bring in an economy that is based around the family, the Irish family and bringing in tax incentives for people to have larger families. It's all very well bringing in immigrants to increase our GDP, And there is a place for that. But at the same time, we also have greater growth of the native population."
To help farmers, Dr Cleary is hoping to introduce a minimum price for beef in Ireland, "One of the last votes of the 33rd Dáil was Aontú trying to bring in the Equitable Beef Pricing Bill, which would stop the soft cost selling of beef to food processors and supermarkets and also the food barons. Irish beef is the best in the world, it is second to none."
"People might say that there's no leeway or there's a lack of a profit margin, well, you can rest assured Aldi, Lidl, and SuperValu do make profits in the tens of millions on the backs of Irish produce, including Irish beef."
"Also, we can't have a green agenda and the Mercosur deal - the idea of culling the Irish herd by 250,000 and then shipping beef up from Brazil and Argentina, is completely absurd and has to be disregarded."
Dr Cleary also called for the renegotiation of the Common Fisheries Policy, to give Irish fishermen higher quotas in Irish waters.
