Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

Yes, they usually got it wrong from their own point of view. It was an attempt to set the boundaries of constituencies to suit the perceived electoral advantage of the Government in office. We should not revive that practice. The Labour Party will, for those reasons, accept the Bill, notwithstanding reservations about its contents and our observations on the report of the commission.

The issue which attracted most attention since publication of this report is the recommendation on County Leitrim. I identify with the criticisms of people in that county of the proposal to divide their small county between two other constituencies. To be fair to the people of Leitrim, this issue should be explored on Committee Stage. The Save County Leitrim campaign has written to the Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment and Local Government asking to be heard in advance of Committee Stage. The committee should accede to that request. I ask the Minister to facilitate such a hearing before Committee Stage in order that the concerns expressed in County Leitrim can be considered.

While County Leitrim has received the most prominent attention in regard to the changes to county boundaries I draw attention to the terms of reference given to the commission which I thought were odd at the time. While the commission was asked to have regard to the undesirability of breaching county boundaries, that restriction did not extend to city boundaries or to the administrative county boundaries in Dublin, which is odd. Either the counties of Dublin — Fingal, South Dublin and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown — are counties or they are not. If they are counties the same rules should apply to those counties as apply to other counties. In effect, the commission was given a different remit for Dublin than for the rest of the country and it has produced an odd configuration.

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