John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I will not require the full ten minutes. This is very straightforward legislation. As the Minister of State said in his concluding comments, it is essentially about establishing the new constituencies for elections to Dáil Éireann and for the European Parliament elections which will take place in June of next year. We have a tradition of implementing those independent commission recommendations in full and without amendment and I am certain that will be the case in this instance also.

Comments from some Members of the other House are, however, unfortunate, which suggested that the independent commission was in some way biased in its deliberations and that it set the variants lower in certain areas of the country for various reasons. To be honest, I think that is an uncalled-for assertion. The independent commission, which we legislated for in this House, is a very important organisation. It had an unenviable task in setting the new constituencies for Dáil Éireann in light of the huge growth in population this country has experienced in recent years. It obviously made the decision to have higher and lower variances in different parts of the country to try to maintain county boundaries to the greatest extent possible. That was the right thing to do for the commission. Obviously, the higher the number of seats, the greater the difficulty in terms of redrawing those boundaries. It is fair to say there is probably a greater variance than many of us would have expected. The highest variance is in Clare at +8.08 with a population of 31,985 per TD, versus on the other end of it, -8.13 in Kildare South, which has a representation ratio of 27,186 per TD. There is certainly a greater variance there but the commission had a very difficult task.With regard to the European Parliament, the changes, which are largely in the Midlands-North-West constituency, reflect the changing population and the increased membership for Ireland in view of the revisions.

I will not say much more than that. The commission is to be commended for the work it has done. It has a very important to role to play going forward in terms of education and information, the register and so on, although today is not the day to discuss that. I thank the Minister of State for bringing forward the Bill and I am certain it will pass without amendment.