GE 24 meet the candidates: Peter Burke (Fine Gael)

Meet the candidates GE 24

I’m Peter Burke, I am married to Olivia and we have two young sons, Leo is 8 and Ted is 5. I was born on a family farm in Clonmore, Mullingar and I am a trained chartered accountant. I worked for 10 years in the private sector for Stephens Cooke and Associates in Mullingar before being elected to the Dáil in 2016. I also served on Westmeath County Council from 2009.

When it comes to housing, why should the Irish people vote your party back into power when homelessness is at a record level in this country?

This government have put a laser focus on the delivery of new housing, and we can see progress made with 58,000 new homes commenced in the last 12 months alone, and 500 first-time buyers now getting the keys to their new homes every week. The evidence of this is unfolding before our eyes when we look around our towns and see multiple active building sites across Mullingar and Westmeath. The solution to housing and homelessness is delivery; Westmeath County Council added 900-plus units to their social housing stock in the last term and we need to keep this momentum up.

How do you intend to address the economic concerns that many people face due to the rising costs of groceries, insurance, fuel...?

I know costs have gone up, anyone who does the weekly shop or gets an electricity bill at the end of the month knows that too well. A comprehensive set of new measures were introduced by this government since we saw inflation rise mid-2022, including energy credits, bonus and double payments for those on Carers Allowance, Disability and other means-tested payments; we had a reduction in school transport costs, college costs, increases to Child Benefit and targeted measures such as major increases to the Fuel Allowance, Back to School Allowance and other payments. Inflation has now stabilised at under 2%, but some prices stay stubbornly high, such as electricity costs, and Fine Gael have committed to review further payments if re-elected, while balancing the risk of adding more fuel to the fire when it comes to inflation. Our economy continues to grow, with record employment levels, but a good economy needs to pay off for citizens and improve their quality of life. Because of the strength of the economy, we were able to invest €3 billion to alleviate some of the cost of living increases, and we will not shirk from doing that again if the need arises.

What is your proudest achievement as a TD representing Longford Westmeath over the last five years?

I was involved in introducing new legislation, reforming and increasing business supports but I would have to say helping to secure a new home for our Civil Defence volunteers in Mullingar is one of the cases I am most proud of. Our Civil Defence were working out of sub-standard accommodation, which was completely unfit for purpose, while coming to the aid of the most vulnerable in our society and in often in dangerous and hazardous conditions. Their new building is state of the art and reflects the high standards and commitment all of the team show, day in day out. When I was Minister for European Affairs and Defence, I was able to prioritise Civil Defence and ensure they had appropriate budget lines and resourcing were in place.

Is there anything personally that you would do differently?

I am certainly not immune to making mistakes. I try not to dwell too much on issues I can’t change but try to learn for the future. Something that springs to mind where I believe the government got things wrong were the rules put in place around maternity hospitals and the limitations put on pregnant women when it came to important appointments and early stages of labour. It is an incredibly important time in your life, where life changing events can occur, and no person should ever have to go through any element of that on their own.

If you were marking the performance of the current government out of 10 what would you give it?

I will let the public do that when they go to the polls this week. Undoubtedly we have challenges, like all countries in the world, but I don’t believe our situation is as negative as many suggest. We are living longer than we ever have due to good health outcomes, we are at full employment and average salaries have risen. We have one of the top education attainment levels in the world, and our economy is the fastest growing in Europe. These are the facts.

Other parties lose sight of the fact that the only reason we are running surpluses now, that we are in the position to invest billions into healthcare, into housing, into childcare, transport, education and all the other areas we need to, is because of our economy. Because of how it has been managed, because of the jobs that have been targeted and created, the support we have provided enterprise and because of the hard work of the Irish people. Fine Gael have a plan to further grow the economy, to add 300,000 more jobs to the economy if re-elected, breaching three million for the first time ever. Thus we will be in a position to invest more in infrastructure, in capital projects like schools and hospitals, to increase capacity of our services and deliver additional income into households.

What one issue would be your top priority if you are elected to the Dáil?

I think we need to keep a relentless focus on the area of housing so that families can have security when it comes to their home, and young people have the opportunity to purchase an affordable home and build their lives here. We now have the various schemes established and bedded in, the systems in place to drive on and I believe we will get to our 60,000 homes a year target if we stay on this course.