Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

I will speak on the Schedule and the new designation of Sligo-North Leitrim and Roscommon-South Leitrim. I understand the Minister's firm position on refusing to accept amendments, and do not expect him to argue it again. I wish to make my argument. The first electoral changes to Leitrim, and the first breach of the county boundaries, were in 1961. The designations used were Sligo-Leitrim and Roscommon-Leitrim. In 1969, the then Minister with responsibility for local government, Mr. Boland, in his wisdom decided it was not enough to split Leitrim in two and split it in three. He created an enclave around Kinlough, near Bundoran, where he took 8,000 Leitrim voters to prop up south Donegal which at the time, like most of the western seaboard, was haemorrhaging people.

In regard to the other two constituencies comprising 11,000 voters, it is rather interesting to look at the figures now. That would be a total of 30,000. The current population of the county officially is 25,000. Eight thousand came under the new designation of Leitrim. The commission did not make any designation of territory in terms of Sligo-Leitrim, Roscommon-Leitrim. Under one of the Minister's predecessors, Jim Tully, a further revision was made and again the designation by the Minister was in terms of Roscommon-Leitrim, Sligo-Leitrim.

The first commission did its revision under the Lynch Administration and after 20 years it restored the county to a single political entity. That argument was redundant, therefore, until today. Considering that we have been speaking in this debate about legal precedent and constitutional positions, I do not understand how the commission decided that the new designation should be Sligo-North Leitrim and Roscommon-South Leitrim. There was no precedent for that. The point I was making earlier about Leitrim, as the Minister is fully aware, and as the House is by now even more aware to the point of mild irritation and a good deal of boredom, to which the Minister of State, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, devoted a significant part of his Second Stage contribution, and I pay tribute to him for that, is that there is deep hurt in County Leitrim but it is as much about the psychological impact it is having on the county rather than any political fallout.

On the psychological impact, I quoted the former Senator, the late Paddy O'Reilly, in an earlier debate not necessarily relevant to constituency change, when he referred to the geographical make-up of County Leitrim as a "geographical monstrosity" because the drumlin hills are on one side and there are mountains on the other. The Minister and I have often spoken about history, going back to the 12th century, the creation of the counties and the divide and conquer policy of the English at the time. In our part of the country they split up the traditional Breffni Ó Raghallaigh and Breffni O'Rourke and created this "geographical monstrosity", as the late Senator O'Reilly called it.