Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

-----especially in view of the farce that passes for a presidential campaign, with half a million people unemployed and our hospitals in shreds and the media filled with a personality fest known as a presidential campaign? What are the Taoiseach's proposals regarding either abolition or at least democratising the office?

Does the Taoiseach accept that in outlining fairly precise figures for Dáil constituencies the Constitution sometimes creates a straitjacket which results in lines on maps, much like the way the Western imperialists divided up Africa to suit themselves? For example, a cohort of voters in Swords are referred to as being in Dublin West and they are feeling very alienated from their hinterland to which they belonged for decades and to which they should be returned in a Dáil constituency review. Will the Taoiseach deal with that so the rights of residents in those areas are respected, rather than leave them subjected to a line through a map just to fit the figures in the Constitution?

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