Neale Richmond: People just assume because of an accent because of where you’re from you must be just doing this as a plaything and surely you’re a secret millionaire and surely you live in a mansion. Yeah you worked hard and managed to buy a house. You know most people do that. That’s what you do. I’m thirty-six. I’m married with a kid and I have a job. I’m very very lucky but it didn’t just fall in my lap. I speak with a Dublin accent so therefore how dare you talk about the beef sector. I worked in International Trade for four years. My granddad was a beef farmer. My dad worked in the agri sector. I’m not going to pretend like I’m an expert but I’m allowed read the farming section of the Irish Independent and not be mocked. There’s a term I despise it's the term West Brit. And people look at me. I’m Church of Ireland. I played cricket. I play rugby. They love to call me West Brit. And my mother raised me to say that is the equivalent of being called an Uncle Tom. It really is something that, and people say it in such a jokey manner, and I was like hold on now, you know what the connotation of that historically meant. But you move past that. But one thing that I really hate is when someone talks about your physical features. You know, I used to be a lot bigger. I can remember when someone goes to you by the look of you, you can tell you’re a typical greedy politician. Your like who gives anyone the right to say that about anyone, and it happens to all politicians. You know they’ll criticize someone for having a suntan. They’ll criticize someone for not combing their hair in the morning or and it happens across the board. And I really really hate when people pick on the personality, the individual, because that’s not maybe what hurts the person the most, really does it hurt their loved ones, and its really unfair. Abie Philbin Bowman: Finally I know you’re involved in the Irish Parliamentary rugby team. What do you get out of that? Neale Richmond: it’s a great leveler. Like I never thought I’d be sharing a shower with a Sinn Féin TD. But once you’ve done that. All of a sudden you don’t get as nasty to each other. You just realize we’ve something in common. You know we can always bring it back to did you see the match?. We play the Commons and Lords every year. I can go over to Westminster tomorrow, and I’ll have ten guys who’ll meet me for coffee, who will bring me into Westminster, who will sit me down, and say, look don’t worry there’s no one out here to get you, if they even know who you are. You’ve always got a friend.

• published: 11 Aug 2020
• views: 748