Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am proposing the establishment of a boundary commission to review local government constituencies. After the 2011 census, the then Minister, Phil Hogan, established a boundary commission in 2013 to consider introducing local government municipal districts. The subsequent proposals must be reviewed. The figure of 1,653 representatives - 883 councillors and 773 town councillors - has been reduced to approximately 950. The main issue with municipal districts is that there is none in any of the three major cities of Cork, Galway and Dublin. That makes no sense.

There are other flaws, one of the greatest of which was that we used electoral districts as a means of sorting out constituency divisions. That made no sense either. For example, the town of Carrigaline which has a population of 20,000 people has been split in two because of an electoral district divide. Half of the town is in the Carrigaline-Ballincollig electoral district, a ten-seat constituency, while the other half is in the Bandon-Kinsale electoral district, a six-seater. That is illogical. The town was divided because the Department used the electoral districts which were formed in 1850 at the time of the Famine as guidelines.

We must re-examine the system for devising all boundaries, be they for Dáil, European Parliament or local government elections. The world has moved on. In using electoral districts we are going nowhere. We must move forward. The Department needs to consider using an up-to-date system to divide constituencies. Illogically, we have created ten-seat constituencies. Adopting the criteria used in the previous review, most are six to ten-seat constituencies. Ludicrously, Ireland now has six ten-seat, 13 nine-seat and 23 eight-seat constituencies. One of the ten-seat constituencies in Cork covers more than 70,000 people in Carrigaline, Ballincollig and the southern half of Cork city. That is the size of a Dáil constituency. There is no representation on the ground because these areas are too vast. The old constituencies had three to seven seats. We need to return to them in order that there can be actual local government. The current system needs to change because it is not working.

We must consider other issues. Previously, there was one councillor per 4,800 people outside the two major cities of Cork and Dublin. We limited the number of councillors in Cork to 55 and to 63 in Dublin, which made no sense in the context of the principle of one person, one vote. On the other side, as the Acting Chairman knows better than me, is the county council constituency of west Cork which stretches for 110 miles. It starts at Courtmacsherry and ends beyond Glengarriff near Kenmare.

The entire system needs to be reviewed. We have seen what happens when we stick to electoral districts. They do not work. The census has been carried out and the elections will be held in 2019. The preparatory work must start now. If we go into it in the way we did previously just nine months before the local elections, we will not achieve the desired result.We need to examine the geographical areas in order to ensure constituencies are not too big and do not consist of eight, nine or ten seats, yet still provide good representation.