Profile: Michael Collins (Ind)

Known across the constituency as a man of the community, Michael Collins (Ind) is a father with three teenage children and married to Patricia. He's a dry stock cattle farmer from Lowerton, three miles west of Schull, Co Cork. Collins has been active across a range of community platforms for the past 25 years. He is a member of the Irish Farmers' Association, the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association, the local Tidy Towns, community council and is a board member of the West Cork Development Partnership. It is this deep-rooted association with the people at ground level that has paid off for Collins, who topped the poll on entering politics in the 2014 local elections for Cork County Council in the West Cork electoral area. He ran in 2014, he says, out of "sheer frustration" at the lack of political will to address local issues in his region. His top three issues for west Cork will be roads, broadband and reversal of cuts to the Leader funding support programme for rural enterprise.