James Bannon (Fine Gael)

The population is ideal for a Dáil constituency. It is the historical constituency for the area and it was unnecessarily abandoned for the Longford-Roscommon constituency. The old commission erred in its last revision and I am glad it has corrected this. While Longford-Roscommon and Longford-Westmeath do not breach county boundaries, the Longford-Roscommon arrangement was a completely unrealistic constituency because counties Longford and Roscommon are in separate provinces and have separate tourism boards — to which I referred this morning and which should be abolished — and regional authorities. They were in separate health board regions until these were abolished last year.