Meet Your Independent Candidate

Shakeel Jeeroburkan

Shakeel Jeeroburkan is an independent candidate for the Clondalkin Local Electoral Area in the South Dublin County Council Local Elections on May 24.

Shakeel is a former police officer from Mauritius and runs his own business in Clondalkin.

He writes:

If elected, my priorities as a public representative would be as follows:

1. Housing

My overall priority is to end the homelessness pandemic. The root cause of the pandemic is the inexistent construction of social housing. When supply of housing goes down, demand increase, and so is the price. To reduce the demand and ease private rental price, I will push for the construction of more sustainable social housing and affordable housing for first time buyers.

I will look into derelict and vacant properties and work in partnership with other councillors and stakeholders to have those properties made available for rent or be used as social accommodation.

The magic is simply increase supply but by bypassing the vultures. All this will calm the pressure on Private Rental Accommodation, which will also see a reduction of the rental market price and a drastic fall in homelessness.

To compensate to private small-holding landlords, I will fight for a reduction in the Local Property Tax. This measure will also be of great help to young families across the county who are struggling.

Homelessness has reached a record high, and the trend does not indicate anything but an ongoing catastrophe. I will urge the local authority to issue guidelines and provide training to staff about how to respond to the very specific issues families experiencing homelessness face.

A framework to keep children safe and support families out of homelessness must be introduced urgently to prevent children and parents experiencing additional trauma during an extremely difficult time.

I also commit to end youth homelessness through a local youth homelessness strategy linked to the scheme of letting priorities. To achieve this, I will work closely with third parties like Focus Ireland.

Finally, there is the issue of wheelchair accessible housing for people with physical disabilities. To facilitate independent living, I will push for a minimum of 7% of new stock to be fully wheelchair accessible.

Many people with physical disabilities are facing barriers in finding suitable accommodation due to the lack of wheelchair accessible housing, and forward planning in terms of the appropriate design, planning and provision of wheelchair accessible social housing.

2. Environment

I am a poster-free candidate. Unlike others, I have refused to have my mug on every other pole on the streets. I have not put a single poster in the whole electoral area, not just the voluntary poster free zones.

Instead, I will donate to a homeless charity, the equivalent of a local candidate’s average spend on those posters/flyers within 3 months of taking up seat.

I have pledged to work for the people, not the vultures. I want to set an example to other candidates, that single use plastic posters can be prevented. It is an eyesore and is bad for the environment.

If elected, I am going to propose a plastic ban in my constituency, with the cooperation of local businesses. Many countries have banned plastic, so I don’t see a reason why we cannot follow suit as a small community. We need to tackle climate change before it is too late. We need to look after our future generation.

As regards to littering and dumping, I will push for the council to take back control of bin services, and also to provide for more bins in parks and other public spaces.

3. Anti-social behaviour

Using my experience as a detective, I will work closely with community Garda to curb on anti social behaviour, including cruelty to animals, in the Clondalkin electoral area. To bring an end to the problem, there is a real need of trust and team work between the public and An Garda Síochána.

Cooperation is part of the answer, and I will facilitate this by organising public events where community Garda will attend as well as other community stake holders. Another solution would be to work closely with local schools for early identification, prevention and intervention.

4. Integration

Full integration can take a long time and is a two-way traffic. It’s a long winding road that is achievable and is of huge importance in any community. I will work towards organising different types of events to promote integration, which will see more interaction with people of all social background and ethnicity in our community.

Thank you for reading my manifesto and feel free to get in touch should you have any questions. I can be reached by email hello@shakeel.ie or via my Facebook Pageat link below.

Shakeel Jeeroburkan

If you are running as an independent candidate in the forthcoming Local or European Elections and would like to share your manifesto (under 500 words) with Broadsheet readers and potential constituents, send your proposals with headshot to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie