Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Senator will have to ask the Taoiseach and Tánaiste to reflect on that on the third anniversary of the Government next year. That would be the appropriate time. That is the reason why, however. If there was no change in the proportion of the electorate to Members, as we have now, we would have 170 Members in the Dáil on the next occasion. We have gone to the limit of what we are allowed to do constitutionally - that is, to 29,040 per Member of the Dáil on the next occasion. We might have gone down from 158 Members closer to 153 to allow for that, but some latitude is given to the Electoral Commission to get over some of the difficulties that have been mentioned in the course of this debate. Notwithstanding that, in the context of reducing the number of Deputies, the commission found it difficult not to breach as many county boundaries. As Senator Wilson rightly pointed out, 21 were breached on this occasion. His own county and County Donegal were badly affected, but there is no easy way of doing it when one is distributing population under that criteria per elected Member, in line with the terms of reference, while remaining within the limits of the constitutional requirement.