Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. It is important that Ireland exercise its democratic principles as regards constituency boundaries for the next general election. I was fearing the worst. I am from a community in a border area. My children frequently puck a ball over a fence and when I go over the fence, I not only leave my garden, I cross into another parish and another county. At one point I was also crossing into another European Parliament constituency. Many communities gather along border areas, especially where there are river boundaries. I live in the southern end of County Clare in the Ballyglass district electoral division, DED, which has a population of approximately 8,000. It has been kicked over and back like a football throughout the years into different constituencies. At one point, part of County Galway was in the Clare constituency. My home parish was in the Limerick City constituency for many years. To be honest, this prevented me from mounting a campaign for national politics for a long time. Many people wanted my corner of the county to go back into the Limerick City constituency. It might have changed the political landscape in Clare, but it is what it is and it is a good outcome.

Back in the spring when the public were invited to make submissions about this matter, I took the unusual step of leaving my office to do a Facebook live video from the carpark in front of Leinster House on Kildare Street. I urged people at home who have exercised their right many times and have protested about this in their hundreds over the years to get behind this. I told them they had an opportunity to use the public consultation to make their views known and they did so vociferously. I am glad that happened. It makes sense that County Clare in its entirety from the Burren down to Lough Derg comprises the constituency of Clare. No changes can be made on the Atlantic coastline unless shoals of herring are brought into the constituency, but changes are possible on the northern, eastern and southern boundaries. County Clare in its geographic form is the Clare constituency. That means we have the highest ratio of population to Deputy in the whole country, but so be it. It makes sense.

While I am speaking I will pay tribute to a Deputy from the county, Deputy Joe Carey, who has been unwell for a few months. We wish him the best as he recovers from illness. I also pay tribute to another great political character from Clare who confirmed yesterday evening that he will resign from Clare County Council, Councillor Bill Chambers from Cooraclare. He gave many years of incredible service to his community and the wider west Clare area. Cooraclare and west Clare will be at a loss when he retires from politics, but his family will gain back his time and that is wonderful. I pay tribute to all the efforts he made over the years, in particular in trying to advance a sewerage scheme for his village, which could now be close. I hope we will get good news on that front.

The process of reviewing the European Parliament constituencies is under way. The community I mentioned earlier, the Ballyglass DED, was at one time in the Limerick City Dáil constituency but in Connacht-Ulster, which stretches all the way up as far as Malin Head, for European elections. A little common sense has to prevail here. I have no intention of running in the European elections but, as someone who will cast a vote in them, I would like to think county and provincial boundaries will count for something when we are divvying up the country for European election reasons.

Deputy Howlin made some very valid points about autocratic rule and the alarming shift to the far right in this country and throughout the world. Certainly, throughout Europe we can see it happening and it is quite alarming. When I was in the University of Limerick many moons ago studying political science, we were told to buy a textbook, The Age of Extremesby Eric Hobsbawm, at the beginning of our second semester. It begins in 1914 and brings the reader all the way through 1945 and the end of the Second World War. European state after European state was collapsing, or rejuvenating itself at least, with far-right, autocratic leadership. It talks about the belle époque, a French term for the interwar years when there was peace and prosperity in Europe, which very quickly slid back into the dark chasms of the far right. History can, to some degree, repeat itself, and I would certainly be worried about the oxygen the far right in Europe is again getting, although I hope we will not see too much of that in Ireland.

Whatever divisions we might have in this House, the beauty of the Dáil and Seanad is that, through the PR-STV system, there is a lovely blend of elected representatives who do not always agree on things - far from it - but the will of the public is expressed here. The electorate gets to choose candidates and there is no longer a dominant one-party system in this country. Multiple parties are represented in this Chamber, some of them very small, including some, such as Aontú, with just one representative, while other parties in government and opposition have larger numbers. That is the beauty of the Irish electoral system. My party, many decades ago, might have preferred single-seat constituencies with first past the post, but it is good overall, for the democratic will, that voters can go down the ballot paper, like a menu of options, and pick their first, second and third preferences. It is a very fair outcome.

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