A GERMAN TELEVISION crew are currently spending four days in south Kerry interviewing locals and councillor Danny Healy-Rae about rural isolation.

Danny, the son of former TD Jackie and brother of current Independent TD Michael, is no stranger to the German media spotlight.

He told TheJournal.ie that this is the fourth German media crew to visit him in his Kerry constituency.

German Playboy

“There was a magazine crowd from Hamburg, another TV crew came from Cologne, this German crew, they are also from Hamburg, and then there was German Playboy…”

Danny explains that he was interviewed for the March edition of the lads magazine.

“It was the one with Rosanna Davison in it. The one where she didn’t have much on… I was further on in the magazine from her. I have three of the issues in the boot of the car actually.”

Drink driving

The German television station Spiegel are “meeting with people living in small villages and small towns [in Kerry], where shops are closing and pubs are closing,” Michael Healy-Rae told TheJournal.ie. “It highlights a problem that’s also in Germany too.”

Michael believes that the show will be watched by around two million people in Germany and should be broadcast “either this Sunday or next Sunday. It’ll be in German but there will be subtitles”.

The crew filmed a Kerry Council Constituency meeting yesterday evening and were in the Healy-Rae’s bar on Sunday.

Danny said they never condoned drink driving. He wanted permits for people living in certain areas so they could “enjoy one or two in the pub. It would be a form of discretion by gardaí”.

“A person going out playing a game of cards, having a drink or two and driving home never hurt anyone,” added Michael.

Media ridicule

Michael believes that people in Ireland did not understand what they meant because the media “ridiculed” them.

“It’s only smart alecks that think we are wrong,” said Michael.

Danny said he was not worried about how he was representing Ireland internationally and stood by his idea that locals in rural Kerry should be allowed drink alcohol and drive.

“When people [Germans] see the type of roads and the type of people they understand it exactly,” he said.

He called on the the government and “the powers that be to give this consideration”.

“People in rural Ireland are not getting fair play,” Danny said.

Column: Healy-Rae’s drink-driving vote is insulting to people who’ve lost loved ones>

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