Revealed: Tipperary General Election candidate pledges to canvass on horseback
Nadaline Webster of Independent Ireland who is running for a seat in Tipperary South will do part of her canvassing on horseback
General Election candidate Nadaline Webster will do canvassing for her campaign on horseback, she has confirmed.
The Independent Ireland candidate who is running for a seat in Tipperary South says: “We will be canvassing in rural areas up near Emly and Lattin, and we’re hoping to do the canvassing on horseback.”
When asked about her unusual choice of transport Nadaline replied: “It’s difficult to get to rural areas and there’s lots of pressure to do low emissions canvassing.
"Canvassing on horseback is a good healthy way to be out exercising but also promoting something we all very much love and something that we are trying to save. The horse industry is as much under threat as the agriculture industry. There’s a triplicate of issues there. The first is climate change policy, that is significantly problematic and is going to become more so for the horse industry that it has been up until now.
“The second is the cost of living. As costs skyrocket it is always luxury and a struggle to own horses. Most people that own horses very often say they have horses instead of cash. Usually they’re pretty good at sucking up money and it’s one of the things that always gets sacrificed.
"The third thing and rather the most serious is insurance. The issue of insurance is enormous. An awful lot of clubs of all kinds of rural pursuits can no longer even be quoted for insurance since Brexit. We badly need a government backed insurance fund to make things possible. It’s not just sports it’s country shows, everything that we do in the country requires insurance.
"There are not sufficient numbers of insurance companies to even quote for it and when they do quotes of 30, 40, 50 thousand are not unheard of. These are insane amounts of money for rural communities to try and develop from fundraising or find between themselves in small clubs.
"It’s having a massive impact on social isolation and on mental health in rural Ireland. It’s a huge issue and it’s one that doesn’t really get much in the way of attention but the Insurance then links back in with the climate change policies because the UN have a number of alliances in which they require Insurance companies to decarbonise their client portfolios, which means that they have to either stop providing the services to ‘high emitting clients’ or charge them more.”