LUKE McCann has been campaigning in the Colin DEA in a bid to win a Council seat for Aontú next week.
May’s election will be his first time standing in West Belfast having previously run for an Assembly seat in South Belfast.
“I am an ordinary Belfast guy, I love sport, music, art, and for years I lived in Dublin, and South Africa and worked as an accountant," he said. "I came home during Covid and had a reflection on myself and for years I struggled to really find any affiliation with any party and would waste votes come election time and I really felt no one represented me – until Aontú in their first election back in 2019.”
The Aontú candidate said anti-social behaviour and funding cuts are the issues that he wants to tackle. He also wants more services to be made available for mental health services and education.
“More and more kids have autism these days, but they go undiagnosed for long periods of time, it is a real burden on parents because they could be receiving support and because of the waiting list issue for a diagnosis it is causing a delay in this support,” he added.
Luke made the switch from finance to teaching and has been a classroom assistant in St John the Baptist Primary School for over a year now. He believes this has helped him in gaining a perspective on the real threat funding cuts has for pupils, teachers and parents.
“Funding is a real issue that since I moved into the teaching world I have begun to understand on a genuine level. We are relying on block government grants to fund school projects, we have autism friendly centres in our school just like the Butterfly Room, which helps children learn in an environment which is a safe space, however if these grants keep getting cut how can we help everyone learn?”
He added: “We need to become independent from Westminster, we rely on our Tory masters to give us the scraps available for grants, the funding issue affects everyone – teachers, nurses, doctors. If we build our own economy, we can become less reliant on block government grants and we can do that by reducing corporation tax to bring in more businesses. By growing the private sector, we can help improve the public sector.”
