John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

With regard to Senator Lombard's question, I am a self-confessed nerd when it comes to boundaries. The reason for this is that I grew up in a community that is partly in New Ross, County Wexford, and partly in County Kilkenny. I live in the community on the Kilkenny side of the boundary. I am acutely aware of the issue. A heightened awareness comes when one is standing for election as councillor because some houses are in one's electoral area but those right beside them are located in the County Wexford electoral division,. This is what I discovered when contesting the local elections 20 years ago.

The short answer - I do not mean to be snappy - is that there are no protocols. The Senator outlined correctly that there have been reviews of the district electoral divisions, most notably in Dublin when Dublin County Council was disbanded and the four existing authorities were put in place. One of the projects I want to begin - which my officials, who are sitting behind me, know about very well - is a complete review of district electoral divisions, with particular emphasis on suburban areas and areas in provincial towns that were very rural in 1841 but which are now, in many cases, home to large numbers of estates. There is an example in the recently conducted boundary review of local authority areas of a portion of a district electoral division which was in rural Dublin but which is now an entire electoral area electing five people on its own. It is not even the full district electoral division. I know from my own parish of Rosbercon there has never been a situation where boundaries have changed and townlands have been entirely moved.

I will give the Senator the example of a little town called Annefield, which lent its name to a very famous sport stadium and which is why I support the team there. It is in my community. As a result of the line on the map that was drawn between Wexford and Kilkenny in the late 1950s or early 1960s, most of Annefield is now in Wexford. There are two houses in a cul-de-sac which have three voters in them - one of them did not exist when the boundary changed - and they remain in Kilkenny. Nobody ever canvasses them because the entrance to the road is in the town of New Ross. One has to go a mile up the road before one realises one is back in Kilkenny. I know it is in Kilkenny because it is where I come from. I accept the point the Senator made and I hope the district electoral division review will happen. It is about resources. I fully agree with the Leader on the issue of former politicians who do not have skin in the game having some oversight in the future, particularly in the context of local boundaries for election purposes. There is a bigger question in terms of Dáil constituencies and former politicians probably should not be included but that is a matter for another day. There have never been such protocols. They do not exist and they were not breached in this area. I have become quite an expert in the suburbs of Cork in the past 18 months but I had no hand, act or part in drawing the lines on the map. It was done on the basis of some agreement between the local authorities. Where there was no agreement, the people who were involved with the oversight group made the decision. I am sure the Senator can find other examples.

I agree with Senator Colm Burke. I have always favoured geographical boundaries such as rivers and mountain ranges and, in the modern context, dual carriageways, motorways and other physical infrastructure. We have a situation where there is a portion of ground inside the northern end of the M50 in Dublin that elects councillors to Fingal County Council even though it is directly adjacent to Santry. One might, if one was drawing a line now, use the M50 because it has become a barrier. I do not know why they used the road instead of the river but they did. I do not propose that we go into the detail of why some fields are in and some are out in the House. It is not unheard of for the divisions of local electoral areas in cities to go through housing estates. The group responsible for electoral boundaries was instructed to try to respect the integrity of communities including estates but it is not always possible. If I am in this position in five years, with the benefit of hindsight, I think the ultimate solution for those types of questions will be to have more than one group so that physical analyses of areas can carried out before lines are drawn on the map.

Part of my little parish in Kilkenny is located in Wexford. The bit that is in Kilkenny is now in two electoral areas. It makes no sense but it was a decision arrived at by an independent group. With the benefit of hindsight, there need to be more of those groups in place so that proper analyses can be carried out before decisions are made. However, that is not a matter for this legislation.