Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)

It might be helpful if I outlined the law and practice in the area. I will start by quoting the Constitution. Article 16.2.6° states no law may be enacted by the Oireachtas providing for less than three members for a constituency. The relevant part of the Electoral Act 1997, which is being largely re-enacted in Part IV of the current Bill, provides that the constituency commission's terms of reference are limited to recommending three, four or five seat constituencies. In the early years of the State there were seven, eight and even nine seat constituencies but constituency size has been restricted to three, four and five seaters since 1947.

The current Bill provides for 17 three seater constituencies. In the 13 previous constituency revisions, that number has been exceeded on five occasions, including by the 18 three seaters enacted in 2005. On the other hand, there were eight occasions on which there were fewer or the same number of three seaters.

It is the Minister's view that it would be too rigid to restrict a commission to two constituency sizes, that is, four seat and five seat constituencies. That would be the substantive effect of this amendment. There must be a reasonable choice of constituency sizes to produce constituencies that make sense to people on the ground by, for example, enclosing entire communities or adhering to obvious physical features.

Restricting in this way the options available to future constituency commissions could result, in particular, in more breaches of county boundaries. For example, if the population in a county determines that an allocation of six seats is appropriate, in the absence of the two three seat options the county boundary must be breached to achieve the constituencies with four seats or five seats. Donegal is such a case at present. The knock-on consequences of that could be significant across neighbouring constituencies.

The amendment before the House gives no guidance, and Senator Hannigan accepted this, on what would amount to the exceptional circumstances that would permit three seaters. The nature of the task of constituency revision calls for a workable menu of different sized constituencies. The amendment does not provide that and I do not propose to accept the amendment.