John Ellis (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

As someone who has the honour of representing the constituency that is being divided in two by the constituency commission, I probably have most to fear from its actions. However, I do not fear its actions as far as my future in this House is concerned. I am more concerned about the future representation of County Leitrim. I stood for election in the Roscommon-Leitrim constituency in 1977. After the 1977 election, there was no Deputy representing any party who was based in County Leitrim, north or south. South Leitrim was represented by two Deputies who were based in Roscommon and north Leitrim was represented by three who were based in Sligo. The position was similar with Roscommon.

The constituency commission could have avoided this problem. It had terms of reference which allowed it to increase the number of seats in the House by two but it did not exercise that power. Had that been done, Sligo-Leitrim could have remained as a constituency and it would still have had four Deputies. I must, like my colleagues in this House, look to the future. If something is not done about the tolerance levels for representation by Deputies in this House, rural areas, particularly those in the west — which has started to regenerate itself — will become increasingly disenfranchised as time goes on.

In 1960, it took approximately 16,500 people — not voters — to elect a candidate to this House. It now takes 25,000 people, which is almost a 50% increase in the number of people represented by each Deputy. We will have to face up to this problem and decide whether people are to be represented or misrepresented. This country has a history of people having an alliance with their local public representatives in the Dáil. If the current trend is to continue, people will become less closely associated with the Deputies who represent them and will feel more alienated and disenfranchised. Those responsible for setting up the next commission should review the number of seats in this House to ensure rural areas have proper representation.

The new constituency of Roscommon-South Leitrim will stretch from the bridge in Dowra to Shannonbridge, which is one third the length of the country. This is what I will be expected to fight in the next election. Deputy Perry will be expected to fight a constituency which is probably a little tighter, but not much tighter when one takes into account the various areas from Boyle to Enniscrone and Bundoran to Tubbercurry. This is the area we are talking about in the new Sligo-North Leitrim constituency.

I am not coming in here to cry about an electoral commission which did a bad job, but it could have done a much better job and lived with its terms of reference of respecting county boundaries if it examined the other terms of reference which meant they had a right to have 168 Members in this House. We have been disenfranchised by the commission and not by the Government or anyone else. I respect an independent commission as does every other Member. If we decide to interfere politically with electoral commissions in future, I do not want to be a Member of this House. We can all recall when there was gerrymandering. I am long enough around to remember that in the mid-1970s a Minister did a gerrymander that would ensure the existing Government was returned. However, the net result was that the outcome was turned on its head. Whatever Minister appoints the next commission, he or she must ensure that rural Ireland is adequately represented by increasing the number of Members in this House. In some of the suburban Dublin constituencies, one can travel from one end of the constituency to the other in 15 or 20 minutes. Shannonbridge is two hours drive from me. This is why the people of rural Ireland are being disenfranchised.

I came to Leinster House as a Senator in 1977 and had the honour in 1981 of becoming the first Fianna Fáil Deputy to be elected in the county for more than 20 years. I am sure people will accept that I have made a fair contribution towards improving the lot of the people I have represented for almost 30 years. I have seen Leitrim change from a place where everyone left, with the highest standard of education in the country, mainly due to the fact that their parents had no option but to educate them to emigrate. In the last census, for the first time in more than 150 years, the population of Leitrim had increased. It did not increase by accident but because many people have done a lot of hard work. Right across the political spectrum, Leitrim came first, and it did not matter whether one was a Fine Gael representative, a Fianna Fáil representative, an Independent Member or a Labour representative. Everyone stood for the improvement of the area they represented.

I look forward to the challenge of the next general election. I look forward to trying to achieve what I failed to achieve for Leitrim in 1977, namely, to get a Fianna Fáil Deputy elected in the Leitrim section of the Roscommon-Leitrim constituency. However, I must make it clear that without the assistance of the people of north Roscommon and the area bordering the Shannon, which is much closer to me than Sligo town, I have no chance of coming back to this House to represent them.

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