As one of nine children, I grew up in Derry during the height of the Troubles and on a scholarship studied business and politics at Aston University in Birmingham, graduating with honours in 1979. I was recognised as one of Aston University’s 50 Most Influential Alumni. Later, I was honoured as a leading Irish American businessman by Irish American Magazine.

I have lived and worked on three Continents, I am very proud to be Irish. I have only ever had one passport, and have never sworn allegiance to any other country.

After working briefly in England, I emigrated to Australia to work in senior roles at Rank Xerox and after three years, I launched my first successful business, Trinity Group, which I built into one of the leading search and IT contracting firms in New South Wales.

After 15 years in Australia, I sold the business and moved back to Ireland. I invested all my money in a new project called Skydome where I managed to lose all my money, as a result of a lawsuit, which I eventually won. But by the time the judgement came, the company had stopped trading. I then started Claddagh Resources, an Executive search firm.

I have been married to Helen for over 30 years and we have five children.

I attended the White House Good Friday Peace Talks in the late 1990s. I decided to use my profile as one of the judges of RTÉ’s Dragons’ Den show to launch my political career and subsequently came second in the 2018 presidential election.

Now, as a candidate for Midlands-North-West in the European Elections on 7 June, I want to use my business experience and contacts to bring companies and jobs to the Midlands North West.

I have already put my money where my mouth is, so to speak when it comes to using my contacts to help promote Ireland to the global business community.

I arranged for the Chairman of Tata Sons, who own Jaguar Land Rover, Tata Steel, Air India, Tetley Tea and TCS, and have an estimated worth of €350BN with a turnover of over €150B in 2023, to come to Ireland and personally meet with the former Taoiseach. TCS, who own Pramerica, now have operations in Letterkenny, employing over 1500 people. Tata Sons employs over 1 million people globally and is the largest employer in the private sector in the UK. I also arranged for him, to meet with the Presidents of the Universities and Institutes of Technology at the Shelbourne Hotel to discuss bilateral opportunities. I have written two best-selling books on the Tata Group.

I will use my influence with major companies in India, the US and Australia to encourage them to open up their European hubs in Midlands North West.

Another key issue I feel urgently needs tackling is the Mica Crisis. I am also totally opposed to the Green Party. I believe a carbon tax is not the answer to global warming. It is a tax on rural Ireland, a tax on people who can least afford it.

Other areas where I have taken strong positions are the cost of living and housing crisis, and, of course, the illegal migrants crisis. Illegal migrants take houses and health care services that are needed by our citizens. I appreciate the importance of international responsibilities. We play our part but we should always put the Irish above people who are illegally here.

I believe, having being an immigrant myself, puts me in a unique position to speak with authority on the current illegal immigrant crisis in Ireland and put forward practical solutions at a European level to help resolve it.

One solution is to fine the airlines and ferries for effectively trafficking illegal immigrants into Ireland. Give the airlines a €500,000 fine per illegal person they transport and they will stop doing it overnight!

I believe that if the EU was serious about resolving the migrant crisis, they should open immigrant offices as a “matter of urgency” across all the troubled hotspots where the majority of asylum seekers are coming from, and even in London.

These offices would allow refugees to apply for asylum in Europe. The authorities could then consider each case on an individual basis and swiftly vet them to decide who merits entry to the EU.

With the technology we have today, it should take hours not months and years to assess the validity of an asylum seeker’s claim. They could then allocate valid asylum seekers to various EU countries based on a fair lottery system that would distribute them equally across the European Union.

This solution would mean that genuine asylum seekers could be sent to Poland, Spain, France, the Baltic States or Ireland where they will be met with a céad míle fáilte once the Irish public can see there is an unbiased and fair pan-European system in place.

The EU is letting Ireland suffer, to punish the UK for leaving the EU.

It is unfair to have put such pressure on Ireland, as is being witnessed by the tent crisis in Dublin.

I am surprised that nobody in the Irish government, including all the Irish MEPS, has called for such a plan to be implemented.

As a true independent voice, I am asking for your number one vote on June