John Ellis (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

I was not made one either and I have never been made one. Anytime I came to this House I was elected by my peers.

If County Leitrim is to have representation, people must vote for Leitrim candidates. I make no secret of the fact that this is the only way Leitrim will have representation. It will not matter to me whether one lives in Kinlough or Carrigallen, one is a Leitrim person. Neither will it matter to me whether one lives in Sligo or Roscommon. Once the Bill goes through, my mandate will be to represent three counties because I will have an involvement in Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon. However, the only way to ensure this will not happen again is by ensuring that in the terms of reference for future commissions county boundaries are sacrosanct. My colleague, Deputy Cassidy, has the same problem and the Minister has a problem. While he is within his own county, his constituency has been changed. All we can do is go back to the electorate and ask them if they think we are good enough to continue to represent them in this House. We can do no more.

It is time to revisit the O'Donovan cases of 1959 and 1960. We must examine what will be tolerated in regard to representation in this House. We must consider increasing the number of seats if rural Ireland is to maintain a presence in this House. Because of the population changes that have taken place, the east and south will dominate the rest of the land mass, which should not be allowed to happen. As far as County Leitrim and its subdivision is concerned, I will make it an issue in the next election that in future Leitrim will be united as a county whether with Sligo or Roscommon. If the current population trends continue, it will take all of Leitrim and either Sligo or Roscommon to make a three seat constituency after the next revision, if it takes ten years. Imagine that land mass being able to elect only three Members to this House. This will have to be considered by Members on all sides. It is physically impossible for the area to be represented by three representatives. The way to solve the problem is to increase the number of seats. I do not think that anyone is currently prepared to consider the possibility of single seat constituencies with a transferable vote. Despite what might be said, neither the political system nor the public will accept it at this time.

I would like to refer to a few other issues. Several Members referred to the register of voters, which is an absolute horror to those who stand in elections. In the old days, the rate collector checked who was in every house. If he did not include everyone, and one exceeded a certain number of alterations to his registers, his rates payment would be reduced. I discovered this very early on because I examined a register to which there were a large number of genuine changes. The rate collector said I cost him money. When I asked why, he said that because the register was not up-to-date, he was penalised, though the penalty was small. At the time, gardaí also did a tremendous job in checking registers. Nowadays, people who do not even exist, who do not live in the area and who get voting cards are being put on registers. I often wonder how these voting cards are being used because it is becoming a problem. We may have to examine some type of positive ID system for people who vote. In the past the presiding officer who was always from the local area knew practically everyone. If there was a query about anyone, there was always someone in the polling booth to clarify who they were. Nowadays a presiding officer or poll clerk might live 20 miles from the polling booth. Voter identification must be examined because I have no doubt that impersonation has taken place in some constituencies. It is a well known fact that people were put on registers who did not even know they were on them. If it was not queried, they got voting cards and went to vote. The postal voting system also needs to be tightened because it is open to abuse. However, I do not know how this can be done fairly without disenfranchising people. In addition, opinion polls should be banned once an election is called because they can be used to cause disorientation in a constituency.

The Bill will cut County Leitrim in two and leave it with the prospect of having no representation in the next Dáil. The people of Leitrim are totally dissatisfied with the commission. They know they have been disenfranchised and that their natural hinterland has been subdivided. Leitrim and Sligo are in the same Health Service Executive area but when the Roscommon-South Leitrim constituency is created, the two parts into which Leitrim will be divided will be in separate Health Service Executive areas. These are the kinds of changes that affect people's lives.

Various agencies have always operated on a Sligo-Leitrim basis and will be affected by the change to the constituency boundaries. I recently met representatives from one such agency and their main concern was that the area they had represented through the Leitrim partnership would be affected by its division. The Leader programmes have always had a cross-county dimension. There are Leader groups in Sligo and Roscommon — including in the Arigna catchment area which covers Leitrim — but when the changes are implemented, there will be three Leader groups within the one constituency. This poses problems for everybody and we must ensure it will not happen.

It is not possible to achieve the sort of representation people in rural areas expect without increasing the number of seats. The population is now 16.3% higher than it was in 1979 but the number of Members in this House remains the same. What organisation in the country could increase its workload by 16% without increasing its number of employees? If we were to take the population increase into account, we would need 195 Members in this House. While people might complain about the number of Deputies, they still know where they are and still feel they are doing their jobs and representing them. Members of the electorate have the opportunity at every election to throw Members out of the House if they fail to represent them.

The commission should have exercised its power to create two additional seats in the House. This would have prevented the problems encountered by me and Deputy Paul McGrath and the constituencies of Westmeath and Sligo-Leitrim could be left untouched. Roscommon could have been a constituency on its own.

Various steps could have been taken had the commission exercised its power. When the commission was announced, there was an onslaught of people asserting that the number of Members should be reduced from 166. I wonder whether people realise they are being disenfranchised indirectly by the limitation on the number of Members. They are definitely losing out and will continue to do so if what is happening continues.

Members and political parties will have to consider increasing the membership of the House at the first available opportunity. If they do not do so, even more voters will be alienated. Young people do not want to hear about politicians because they feel they are too distant from them. Each day, everyone in political life faces the problem of people feeling alienated and disenfranchised by the system.

I can understand this and can well understand why the Save Leitrim campaign came into being. The people of Leitrim, including me, do not want to see their county left without a representative in the House. This happened in 1977 and will happen again in 2007 if the people do not vote for a candidate from the county. Let nobody be under any illusions about this matter. We can juggle the figures and state that if certain developments take place, a quota might be achieved. I heard somebody say there is a quota of votes in County Leitrim. However, will Deputy Perry be able to tell Fine Gael supporters they must vote for me in order to ensure that Leitrim ends up with a Deputy? I know he cannot do this and that they will not vote in this way.

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