Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North, Fine Gael)

The Constituency Commission is the third commission established under the 1997 Act. The reports of the first two statutory commissions, together with those of the five earlier non-statutory Dáil constituency commissions, and reports on European Parliament constituencies, were all accepted and implemented. It is our duty to prescribe the legislation to implement the recommendations of the Constituency Commission. Therefore, what we should debate today is the legislation. A discussion such as this, if it was to take place, should have taken place before the commission sat and before it started its deliberations.

It is obvious that the Taoiseach or someone else is not happy with the recommendations of the commission. Reports from the Dáil bar, from where most rumours of this House emanate, suggest there were doubts over this commission a long time ago. This news has now got out to the constituencies and there is major uncertainty in them with regard to who represents whom.

In my constituency, a large electoral area with more than 5,000 voters was removed from the constituency and added to the Ceann Comhairle's Kerry South constituency. He now represents those people and I understand he now holds clinics in the area. There is a question with regard to another area in Limerick West with 13,000 voters. Who represents them now? There is a dilemma for communities as to who represents them and a dilemma for politicians as to whether they will continue to represent them. The question is whether the recommendations in this report will be in place by the next election. Are we not entitled to know that?

It is important that the Minister gives us a clear statement this afternoon and states whether these recommendations will be in force. Will he clarify the situation and say whether this will be the case so that we can avoid uncertainty? It is unfair on Deputies and the communities they represent to be left in this dilemma. A statement from the Minister could clarify the situation once and for all.

With regard to the area of my constituency that I will lose, the people of Castleisland, Cordal and the new area of Camp were comfortable with me as their representative. I was proud to represent them and had built up a great connection with those communities. They were sad to be leaving the Kerry North constituency. However, west Limerick and north Kerry have a great affinity, share a culture and have a similar topography. I look forward to representing that part of my constituency in the future as the new constituency of North Kerry-West Limerick. I am pleased with the reception I have received from the various communities in the area. The commission could, possibly, have more appropriately provided two four seat constituencies in Limerick. In 1921, in the second Dáil, Kerry and Limerick West formed one eight seat constituency. The same was true for the June election of 1922. There is, therefore, a historical significance to the decision to unite these Kerry and Limerick constituencies.

I hope that as a result of today's discussions the Government will not ignore the report of the electoral commission nor deliberately delay its implementation. At the moment, the Government seems to be deliberately delaying its implementation, despite the High Court judgment in 2007 which stated the Government was obliged to implement the recommendations of the commission with minimum delay. Surely a decision made months ago should be implemented by now. We should be discussing the legislation to implement the decision of the commission by now rather than having a discussion on the decision.

This discussion should have taken place before the commission was set up and established to report on the boundaries. That would have been the logical approach. Now, we have created uncertainty in communities that are about to be changed. We need, at least, clarification on that so that Deputies do not use their valuable time representing a constituency that may not be in their area for the next election.

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