Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I welcome the Constituency Commission report and congratulate the six members of the commission: Mr. Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill; our distinguished Clerk of the Dáil, Mr. Kieran Coughlan; our distinguished Clerk of the Seanad, Ms Deirdre Lane; our distinguished Ombudsman, Ms Emily O'Reilly; Ms Geraldine Tallon, Secretary General of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government; and the former Secretary General, Mr. Niall Callan. They have produced an excellent report. I note they asked for widespread consultation from the public and they received more than 300 submissions, including a lengthy submission I made on behalf of the Dublin North-East constituency.

Article 16.2.2° states:

The number of members shall from time to time be fixed by law, but the total number of members of Dáil Éireann shall not be fixed at less than one member for each thirty thousand of the population, or at more than one member for each twenty thousand of the population.

The desire is to maintain continuity in the arrangements of constituencies and, in general, the commission has carried out that task very well and deserves commendation. I am aware, as my colleague stated, of instances where traditional boundaries have been breached but the overall constitutional remit of the commission has been carried out well.

It would be a bad precedent if we were to dismantle this commission report and return to the days when politicians with vested interests decided in a committee how the Dáil constituencies would be revised. This would be a bad step backwards and would lead to the charge of gerrymandering, as was the case in the mid-1970s, for a particular election result. We should accept the commission report.

In my submission on behalf of Dublin North-East I made the case that we are an historic constituency going back to the mid-1930s, representing a wide district of the north-east city, from Coolock across to Howth, with very strong economic, community, administrative and cultural ties all across that area. Many of our community and administrative bodies, such as Northside Partnership, Coolock Development Council and others such as the Northside Centre for the Unemployed, operate across the territory. I note the sporting and cultural areas of the constituency.

The issue of breaching county boundaries was put to the commission by a lecturer from NUI, Maynooth. The Acting Chairman, Deputy Costello, will be interested to hear that he wanted to abolish Dublin Central and to bring about new central constituencies for the northside and southside. He did not seem to realise or else was not aware of the strong cultural affinities of the northside of Dublin with Dublin Central constituency as it now exists. Dublin North-East represents two counties, Dublin city and Fingal, but is a region in the cultural, economic and social sense. It would be a backward step to do away with the current configuration.

The main case I made for maintaining Dublin North-East and, with it, Dublin North-West, Dublin North-Central and the Acting Chairman's constituency, Dublin Central — in other words, the current structure of constituencies for the northside of Dublin — was that in my constituency and across the two "county boundaries" we are building a new city, the north fringe. This is a vast territory of more than 25,000 or perhaps 40,000 housing units with a possible population of 50,000. I argued strongly to the commission that it was very important that one group of politicians would be responsible for the invigilation of that development. We did not want two or three constituencies being responsible for an area because then nobody would be responsible. We wanted the same group of politicians. Both I and the Labour Party have over the years invigilated the development of the north fringe, which currently stretches from the coast at Baldoyle, through Clongriffin and Beaupark, onto Belmayne and across to Belcamp and Clonshaugh. We have invigilated a very important development for the city of Dublin. Even with the negative downturn in population we realise that, because of the north fringe, that area will grow much stronger. The resulting remit of the constituency of Dublin North-East included Portmarnock, which was brought in. Deputy Kennedy is particularly upset by the fact that, on the recommendation of this report, Portmarnock is leaving Dublin North and coming into Dublin North-East. Portmarnock and its surrounding district is extremely welcome in Dublin North-East because we have many cultural ties with it. The great Northfinch development encompasses Portmarnock, just as it does parts of my constituency. There are so many bodies, including the Portmarnock-Baldoyle Credit Union, that cross the boundaries.

The report should have re-examined the figure of 166 Deputies because there is no question but that Dublin is under-represented by at least two Deputies. Dublin should have a higher Dáil representation and Dublin North or Dublin West deserved an additional seat. In general terms, however, I am happy with the report. We should not spancel an independent commission or return to the bad old days of alleged gerrymandering.

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