Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. We met last week on another issue and I believe correspondence about it has been sent to her since then. I hope we will be in contact again on that issue. This Bill is the responsibility of the Minister, Deputy Phil Hogan, and the Minister of State is deputising for him.

I support some of Senator Quinn's comments, particularly about the number of Deputies. I believe government from top to bottom is too fat and too big, and this Bill is only tinkering at the edges. I am not sure what reconfiguring the Dáil by cutting out eight Deputies will achieve. If anything, it will split counties, which I will discuss shortly. The Galway West-South Mayo issue is raising a great deal of concern.

We really should have been looking at reforming the Dáil, which is a mission of our Government, and at reducing the number of Deputies to approximately 100. The population of this country is 4.5 million and it is often compared to Manchester, although it is not comparable in many ways, including geography, rural areas, etc. We should have looked at other models and at how other countries do this to come up with a better figure. I am not pleased with this.

Abolishing the Seanad is very unwise. The Seanad should also be reformed and the number of Senators reduced. We are getting rid of town councils but are increasing the number of councillors in other areas. The whole thing raises more questions than it answers. The issue of lobbying, which was raised by Senator Quinn, is important. There should be a holiday period between the time one leaves politics and becomes actively involved with another organisation to eliminate any conflict of interest.

I formally call for the constituency of Galway West to be renamed Galway West-South Mayo. For the first time in my lifetime as a politician, we are taking in 10,000 people from south Mayo. It will include people from Ballinrobe, Cong, Cross, Kilmaine and elsewhere. Not to include south Mayo in the name of the constituency is bizarre. Why not give people from that area an identity? What is the rationale for not including south Mayo in the new constituency title? What do we have to lose by doing so? There is precedent with the likes of Roscommon-South Leitrim and Kerry North-West Limerick. Why not do so in this case? The people concerned are very upset. It is bad enough to be moved in with Galway West but to not even have the area acknowledged is worse.

I make a plea for the Galway West constituency, which will include 10,000 from south Mayo, to be renamed Galway West-South Mayo. If 10,000 people from Galway were being moved into Mayo, they would be rightly aggrieved if their area was not included in the constituency title.