DANNY HEALY-RAE is back in the news following his claim that leprechauns don’t exist and therefore won’t be able to pay the carbon tax which is set to double under the new National Development Plan.
The Kilgarvan TD is no stranger to controversy having courted quite a bit in the past. He is a man for a quote so here’s a history of some of Danny’s more left of field comments.
1. Shoot first, ask questions later
In an interview with Hot Press in 2016 Danny said that people should be allowed to shoot intruders to their home. He said he’d aim for the legs first which is nice of him.
I’d immobilise them first, or something like that. If there was no other way of dealing with them. I’d have no problem with that.
We’ll be staying away from the Healy-Rae homestead so.
In the same interview he also claimed that Noah’s Ark was a ‘fact’. He did say that priests should be allowed to marry so kudos for that I guess.
2. Away with the faeries
Anyone who grew up in the country knows faeries are nothing to be messed with. However, Danny’s taken it a step further in some cases. In May 2017 he claimed that fairy forts were causing dips in roads in Kerry which is mightily impressive.
There are numerous fairy forts in that area. I know that they are linked. Anyone that tampered with them back over the years paid a high price and had bad luck.
In fact he’s so sure, he’d go hungry before messing with them.
I have a machine standing in the yard right now. And if someone told me to go out and knock a fairy fort or touch it, I would starve first.
3. Down with electricity
His latest comments claiming that “one splash of water” would fry an electric car in Kerry shot him into the headlines. However, this is not Danny’s first run in with an electric car. In October 2016 he lamented the lack of plugs in Kerry for the cars.
It is only pure waffle to say that people should diversify and buy electric cars when there are no facilities to plug them in. They can only travel 100km at a time.
This is despite the average mileage of Volkswagen e-Golf being 200km and having no electrocutions in Kerry so far.
4. He’ll say anything to distract from drink driving legislation
It’s important to note that Danny is a publican and so has a vested interest in not wanting lower drink driving limits. As a result, he’s claimed a few odd things in his opposition.
If you eat too much and get in behind the wheel of a car, then you’re a danger on the road because you are likely to fall asleep after eating a big meal.
Eating a 3 course dinner might make you think you’ve a food baby but it doesn’t factor in a third of all road deaths in Ireland. He even once tried to blame hedges saying pedestrians were being hit because of a lack of hedge cutting.
We’re not allowed to cut the bushes so they’re walking halfway out on the road because the briars and the bushes are sticking out in the road.
Just bring in the damn legislation.
5. Climate change? What climate change?
So Danny says ‘God controls the weather’ and that climate change isn’t real because ‘If we go back to the 11th and 12th century this country was roasted out of it and the 15th and 16th century we were drowned out of it’.
However he came out with a rather left field theory regarding the ozone layer in 2016 where he claimed that nuclear testing caused damage rather than human activity.
They told us about the ozone layer, that it was greenhouse gases and that it was cans of hairspray or whatever. But they never told us that it was nuclear testing.
Previous to that in 2016, Danny invited climate change activist Leonardo Di Caprio to run for office in Kerry. This was in response to Leo saying those who didn’t believe in climate ‘should not be allowed to run for public office’.
I’ll let the people of Kerry decide that. If he wants to put his name on the ballot paper in Kerry or in any other county in Ireland, he’s welcome to do that and we’ll see how he gets on.
People of Kerry, you know what to do.
