Candidate brings home the bacon

“HONESTLY, I’m not telling you any porkies... there’s a real pig running around.”

A general election candidate will be hoping to bring home the bacon again today after an encounter with an unusual constituent.

Cllr John Gilroy, who is seeking a seat in the Cork North Central constituency, was canvassing his home town of Glanmire yesterday morning when some locals informed him that a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig was running loose near the Crestfield Shopping Centre and nearby schools.

“I thought they were winding me up at first because you wouldn’t normally see one of them running around a busy urban area. But a few minutes later myself and my canvass team spotted him wandering towards an area where there were a number of children playing,” Mr Gilroy said.

“We decided we’d better catch him as he could cause a traffic accident, or if he got spooked he could run into the children. He’d could have caused a bit of damage as I reckon he weighed about 20 stone. He was a fierce fat fella,” the Labour Party candidate said.

Some shocked locals also alerted gardaí to the unusual stray.

After about half an hour Mr Gilroy and his canvass team managed to persuade the rather reluctant pig into a local man’s back garden.

“One of the residents of Hazelwood Drive kindly offered to keep him out of harm’s way while we found out who his owner was. He later collected him,” Mr Gilroy said.

Liam Ryan, who owns the nearby SuperValu, said the pig was lucky he didn’t stray into his supermarket. “He could have ended up in our finest sausage range if he had,” Mr Ryan joked.

Picture: Cllr John Gilroy who was canvassing as a Labour candidate in Cork North Central keeping an eye on containing the pot-bellied pig which was strolling around Hazelwood Drive, Glanmire. Picture: Denis Minihane