Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Kitt, to the House. This is an interesting debate on constituency revisions and the Bill. The commission is composed of very worthy people and they are very conscientious, but they rely on the statistics and personnel of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. With respect, I do not know whether one can have a completely independent and neutral commission if one relies on statistics, facts, figures and maps from the Department which may influence the division of constituencies. I bring this up because my first constituency, in 1977, was Roscommon-South Leitrim. Because of the constituency composition, the outgoing Deputy, Pat Joe Reynolds, from Ballinamore, County Leitrim, lost his seat. The late Sean Doherty, Joan Burke, who is hale and hearty, and I represented Roscommon-South Leitrim. Senator Ellis was elected a Senator at that election and worked very hard in that constituency. The other Deputies and I gave great attention to the southern part of County Leitrim, which we represented. However that does not mean there was a Leitrim Deputy at that time.

The next constituency I was involved in was the Roscommon part of Galway-East, which was the constituency of the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Kitt. It was very fortunate for me that Galway was right beside where I lived in Castlecoote. However, it affected the political future of Tom Hussey, a sitting Deputy, whose whole base was removed from him. That was not very fair. I personalise this because the best way to explain how constituencies affect people is to illustrate how they affect oneself.

The independent commission of 1991 drew up the great idea of retaining two or three-seat constituencies in County Mayo, against all the numerical odds, taking parts of Galway in one part of the constituency, and leaving Roscommon tied up with County Longford. This is as defective as the south Leitrim situation, if not more so, because Longford is in the province of Leinster. We had the River Shannon between Roscommon and Longford with only two points where both counties could be accessed, in fact the bridge at Lanesborough was the only bridge that directly linked into the constituency of Longford. One of the members of the commission, who was representing the Clerk of the Dáil, suggested I buy a boat, which was very worthy of him and a very helpful suggestion. It was a four-seat constituency.