Camillus Glynn (Fianna Fail)

I will be brief. When politicians had the responsibility of overseeing constituency boundary changes, if the result did not find favour it was called gerrymandering. Do we call this "commiemandering"? I do not think any politician in the history of the State who was responsible for the redrawing of constituencies would have done a worse job than has been done. Whatever modus operandi was used to come to the conclusions that were arrived at, common sense did not play a part. It is the most ludicrous result I have ever seen. I am not being patronising because Senator Ellis is sitting in front of me, but to dissect Leitrim, the smallest and most disadvantaged county, in the manner that has been done, with the effect of denuding that county of any representation in Dáil Éireann is nothing short of disgraceful. The people who produced the report that brought about that result should hang their heads in shame. If politicians had brought forward that result their heads would be called for on a plate many times.

As far as I am concerned anything I could say from here on has been said and would be deemed to be repetitious. When one devolves ultimate authority to an entity to produce a report, this is what one gets. There is no redress. The commission got the autonomy to do what it did and boy oh boy did it make a hames of it. If one employed a team of planning consultants to make a hash of it, I doubt it would have done as good a job. As is said in another forum, with that I rest my case.