Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. I wish to make some comments in regard to my area and other constituencies, as well as raise broader political issues on how we should proceed.

While I respect the fact that the commission is an independent agency, some of its proposed changes make no sense. Several Senators referred to changes in the Kerry and Limerick regions. Any reasonable person would find it impossible to justify merging parts of County Kerry with County Limerick to form a new constituency rather than the straightforward arrangement of leaving Limerick as two constituencies while taking one seat from the two Kerry constituencies and merging them into one. To put it mildly, the decision suggests that inappropriate influence was brought to bear. I fail to see how we have arrived at this arrangement. It makes neither political nor geographical sense to include people in the western part of County Limerick with Kerry North. I appreciate that the present regulatory regime requires that demographic considerations are to the fore in decisions on constituency configurations but common sense is also necessary. Constituency, county and parochial traditions appear to have been disregarded in the case of counties Kerry and Limerick.

I am again disappointed, as I was when we last debated electoral boundary legislation, that County Leitrim remains the forgotten part of Ireland in terms of politics. I accept that the county is represented by Deputies who live in adjacent counties and I am sure they do their best to represent it. However, if we had told the people of Leitrim when the State was founded that the day would arrive when they would be politically irrelevant or find it impossible to be elected to the Dáil, they would have regarded themselves as having a very limited form of independence. I hope we will reconsider the constituencies of Roscommon-South Leitrim and Sligo-North Leitrim. They may be electorally fair or demographically proper but it is unfair to set an impossible obstacle before those people of the proud county of Leitrim who want to become Members of the Dáil.

I wish to introduce an element of political parochialism to this debate by expressing my disappointment at the changes that have been introduced to County Cork. When these changes were announced more than 12 months ago, much of the reaction was focused on the potential political winners and losers. The fact that nobody seemed to note that my prospects for election in Cork East were affected is an indication that I have fallen off the political radar. The unusual decision to remove a chunk of the most northerly part of Cork East and a part of the former Cork North-West stretching almost to the Kerry border and to include these areas in a Cork city constituency makes no geographical or socioeconomic sense. Residents of the centre of Cork city will now be in the same Dáil constituency as people living on the Limerick and Kerry borders. I am aware this decision will not be reversed but I want to formally express my disappointment with it.

I concede that every Electoral (Amendment) Act has introduced changes which do not appear sensible and realise that we need to consider the broader picture. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government or his officials were reported in the media last weekend as suggesting the possibility of fixed Dáil constituencies, although I do not know how these could be made to withstand constitutional challenge. From the perspective of political certainty the present situation whereby people can be moved from A to B literally overnight does not make for good politics or governance. It would be helpful if we could have greater certainty regarding constituency boundaries.

We have a duty to examine our electoral system regularly. We have fooled ourselves into believing that multi-seat proportional representational politics is good for democracy and governance. To be blunt, many of the economic, cultural and social successes we have enjoyed since the foundation of the State have happened accidentally rather than due to political leadership. We have at times succeeded despite the system rather than because of it.

Our present political system, which makes colleagues compete against each other, means that the competition for ideas takes second place. That does not make good sense but as long as multi-seat proportional representation remains, the easiest way for any Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael candidate to win is by taking the seat of his or her party colleague because there will always be a seat available for the bigger parties. That does not make for good politics. Election results reveal that multi-seat constituencies have not lived up to their aspiration of bringing people in from the margins. Perhaps the reduction in the number of five and six-seat constituencies will give a broader spread of representation.

I hope we will have further debate on electoral reform because we need to consider other fair electoral systems, including single-seat proportional representational constituencies and list systems. There would be a bonus for political parties to fight on the question of their policies and programmes rather than in-fighting among candidates within constituencies.

We must remove the internal contest between party colleagues and focus political debate on a battle of ideas and skill between the various political parties. The present system of proportional representation within multi-seat constituencies does not help in that regard. The current legislation does not provide for debate on this but if the Minister is looking at the possibility of reforming politics and making it more real, relevant and responsive, we must admit that what we have been doing in our elections should be reviewed.

I refer to local elections and government which are so important. These have been neglected from a funding and reform perspective, although the Minister made some comments on electoral expenditure for local elections. The local elections are coming down the tracks and trying to change the goalposts four or five months from an election date is very difficult. If the Minister has proposals, they would need to be published very quickly and I hope he will consult widely in any changes he may wish to make.

We can sometimes get hung up on the expense of local elections and what candidates may spend. Considering the electoral areas down the years, the people who have spent the most money did not necessarily get all the votes. Local elections and government are generally more locally oriented, and the track record or reputation of the candidates can account for much more than money spent on a campaign. Large sums of money would not necessarily dictate results to the same degree as general elections.

There may not be a problem in this regard so before we go fixing an issue, we should check how severe the Minister believes the present problem to be. I look forward to him returning pretty quickly with any ideas or proposals he has on local elections. It would be very unfair to only tell local election candidates the new rules of engagement in April.

I formally express my disappointment, and not only from a personal perspective, about some of the constituency changes, including those in Cork. They are ill-thought out and make no geographical sense. One can argue about the political sense they make but in the context of our current electoral system, all people in the constituency should feel close — politically and geographically — to their representatives. Some of the new configurations of constituencies do not provide for this and seem to have been made up as we went along. I am disappointed as a result.