Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I support Deputy Cian O’Callaghan’s amendments. One of the issues is that members of political parties are probably the last people who should be asked about which size constituencies they would like. If you are in a small party, of course you would prefer larger constituencies. If you are a larger party, for selfish strategic reasons, you might argue that you would like constituencies to be smaller. The great value of having an independent commission is that you can at least set out criteria by which they would then assess the optimum size of constituencies to achieve a particular result.

Rather than saying whether we favour this or that size, if we start from the point that we want to have the most representative cross-section of society represented in the Oireachtas and if we also want to make sure larger, less populated rural constituencies do not end up with a significant imbalance where Deputies tend to be from one area rather than another, we can set some reasonable criteria for the most desirable outcome for the commission. It can then do a study, look at the scientific evidence and come back with something much more impartial than anything from elected Members of this House. Our party has always favoured larger constituencies and we continue to do so, despite the fact the party has grown, because we accept the point made by Deputy O'Callaghan that they are generally more representative. The caveats, however, must be about respecting not necessarily county boundaries exclusively but community boundaries and ensuring we do not end up with large constituencies where a significant minority of the population that is geographically located in one area ends up with no representation just because of the vagaries of the proportional representation single transferable vote, PRSTV.

Again, it is a little like Deputy O'Callaghan's earlier amendment and I can imagine what the Minister of State will say. However, it is one whereby we could have a commission to do a very good piece of work and come up with the right formula for how to deal with this. I will be interested to hear what the Minister of State has to say about it.