Richard Boyd Barrett tells Hot Press he was politicised by punk rock - and a trip to Israel

In an exclusive interview in the new issue of Hot Press out today (Thursday), recently-elected TD Richard Boyd Barrett tells us that punk music politicised him.

“It played a significant part. We used to read avidly all the political tracks on some of the punk singles and albums, which would be about things like anti-nuclear, animal rights, anti-war stuff, so it definitely had an impact."

Boyd Barrett also recounts details of a trip to Israel, during which he got to know numerous Palestinians and saw first hand the appalling treatment that was meted out to Palestinians by the Israeli authorities.

He goes on to recall how he discovered Sinead Cusack was his birth mother. “I got a letter from the adoption agency asking would I be interested in meeting my birth mother, because she was interested in meeting me. And I said yes, straight away. And it was all very good. I was aware of Cyril Cusack (Sinead’s father), obviously. The Cusacks were originally from Dalkey, and my mum’s family was also from Dalkey, they were a stone’s throw away from each other. And they knew each other vaguely. So there was a lot of overlap.”

Read the full, fascinating interview in the new issue of Hot Press (Bell X1 cover), out now.