John Ellis (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister to the House. I do not welcome the Bill and I have made statements in this regard long before today. The Minister is committed to the legislation because he inherited the commission report, which has become the most secretive document we have had in the country for a long time. I have made requests under the Freedom of Information Act 1997 regarding the report, only to be told that no information can be provided and this is a sacrosanct decision. I also contacted the Ombudsman who made the same decision and said the only place it could be challenged was the High Court. That is not transparent. Issues such as this are of grave importance to people throughout the country.

Over the past 14 or 15 months, I have put on record my disgust and that of the people of County Leitrim at the way the county has again been gerrymandered. The county was divided for 20 years until 1981 when it was reunited as part of the Sligo-Leitirm constituency. The Murphy judgment and population figures are used as a cover by the commission for its actions. The judgment states equality should be achieved but, in doing so, there were other means for dealing with the situation in Leitrim. Some 75% of the submissions to the Constituency Commission prior to its most recent report came from Country Leitrim. I am reliably informed that individuals, including the chairman of the commission, wanted the county to remain intact in one constituency. I could not say this outside the House but I have privilege to say that. That is the reason the relevant documents are being kept from the public. It is wrong that the people of Leitrim, no more than the people of west Limerick who have been kicked into Kerry or the people of north Meath who have been kicked into Louth, are subject to the commission breaking every one of its terms of reference, yet its recommendations are accepted as a fait accompli. However, the Minister's comments today will ensure the report is not a fait accompli.

The Minister confirmed that the decisions taken by the commission in the order in which he gave them, mean the members of the commission were not fair and objective in their assessment of everything that came before them. Their terms of reference stated they had the right to increase the number of Deputies from 166 to 168. As Senator Buttimer said, people might think there are too many Deputies and Senators but those who do not have representation in County Leitrim do not think so. The people of west Limerick who have been kicked into Kerry or the people of south Offaly who have been moved into a Tipperary constituency do not think that either.

The county boundary has always been sacrosanct in the State. Football is played to the county boundary while local authorities are county-based, yet the Dáil electoral system is not county-based but it should be. A constitutional amendment is needed to make county boundaries sacrosanct and to allow the number of Members to vary according to population. That must be done because it is open to challenge. The Minister might not be happy with a number of the Bill's provision but the precedent had been set for him. If we could read the documentation that was produced before decisions on boundaries were reached, we would understand why the commission delivered its recommendations.

The commission members broke their terms of reference, which stated that county boundaries should be adhered to where possible and, if not, natural boundaries should be adhered to. The trust placed in the commission by the Houses of the Oireachtas to prepare this review under the Minister has been broken. Even at this late stage the Minister should seek a legal opinion on whether the breaking of the terms of reference means the report is flawed.

I acknowledge that the Minister has a problem regarding the constituencies for European Parliament elections. We all accept they are what they must be, and are going to be, as they are European Parliament constituencies. There is time to review the Dáil constituencies. The Bill will disenfranchise people right across the country. Instead of being represented by their own, people will be represented by outsiders. I am not being critical of any of the people who represent Leitrim at the moment and who live outside the county. However, if it comes to loyalty everyone accepts that they will stand up for their own county first and take that position.

The Constituency Commission could have dealt with the problems of Leitrim and other areas had it changed from having 166 Members to 168. It would have allowed the tolerances to be such that county boundaries would not need to be broken. There were a number of opportunities open to it even to have left all of Leitrim in the one constituency. Leitrim and Cavan would have had exactly the numbers for a four-seat constituency. I accept that the six-seat constituency comprising Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon was not within the commission's terms of reference. However, it was a constituency that would have ensured no breaking of county boundaries.

A number of other permutations could have been considered elsewhere in the country to prevent what has happened here. I wonder how far the commission went within its terms of reference and how clear-cut it was. I am convinced there is a cover-up here. I have made applications under the Freedom of Information Act right up to the Ombudsman, which was as far as I could go short of the High Court, in an attempt to get the detail that was not being made available. No other papers are unavailable in this way. Even with a freedom of information application to discover what goes on in government, a certain amount of information will be made available. This is the nearest thing I have seen to somebody handing out a report and saying: "This is our report and there is no come back on it." While I can understand there being no comeback, the documentation used to produce that report should be made available to the public.

I have no doubt that if this is challenged — as I believe it will be — the commission will be found not to have acted within its terms of reference in the report it prepared. If it decided at the outset that it was going to have only 166 Members rather than examining having 168, which was within its terms of reference, it was not being objective or constructive within its terms of reference. That is quite obvious. That is why I asked the Minister to confirm that the first decision taken by the commission was to have only 166 Members in the Dáil. When it decided not to examine the possibility of having 168, it broke its terms of reference. The public should be made aware of this. It is the sort of thing that probably could not be said on the street, but it can be said in this House. The Minister has a responsibility to have the report reviewed in the context of the legal advice available to him and I hope he does so.

Some of the people in Meath have been moved into the Louth constituency, with county boundaries being broken again. Part of Westmeath is in the Meath West constituency — a double break. Based on natural geography, areas that were divided in Meath down the years have been subdivided again. I wonder if personal agendas were involved with regard to some of the action that was taken. I know there could have been, but to prove that is beyond the capacity of any Member of this House or of the Minister. Certain people had certain agendas when it came to dealing with this situation, which is very wrong. It is very unfair that somebody with local interests should be involved in this process. That matter needs to be investigated.

Let us consider west Limerick. Kerry is a natural five-seat constituency because as we discussed earlier, rural areas are being depopulated of Deputies because of the change in the balance of population. It is considerably easier for a Deputy to run a five-seat constituency in Dublin when it takes a maximum of ten or 15 minutes to get from one end of it to the other, than to run a five-seat or even a four-seat constituency in a rural area, which might be 100 miles from one end to the other. These are the sorts of problems we all face.

The Constituency Commission has made a total mess of its terms of reference in producing its report. I appeal to the Minister to review the Bill even at this late stage. I ask him to ask a new commission to act within the terms of reference provided, which have been totally broken, as the Minister has confirmed to me today. It is important that the Minister has it reviewed. I am convinced that the commission was not objective when it decided not to review every situation before reaching its decision. The net result is that the people I represented in Leitrim no longer have a voice in the Dáil and following this revision have no chance of having it for the foreseeable future.