James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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601. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government his plans to sign off on the report of the local electoral area boundary committee; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46465/18]

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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612. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government when he plans to sign off on the recommendations of the boundary commission in advance of the 2019 local elections. [46660/18]

John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 601 and 612 together.

I established two independent Local Electoral Area Boundary Committees on 13 December 2017 to review and make recommendations on local electoral areas having regard to, among other things, the results of Census 2016 as well as the commitment to consider reducing the size of territorially large local electoral areas as set out in A Programme for Partnership Government(May 2016). The two Committees reported to me on 12 June 2018 and now stand dissolved.

On foot of the two reports, orders are currently being prepared within my Department under section 23 of the Local Government Act 2001 to give effect to the Committees' recommendations in relation to local electoral areas. It is anticipated that these orders will be signed later this year. The local electoral areas to be specified in these orders, and the number of members to be elected for each electoral area, will apply at the next local elections which are due to be held in late May 2019 in tandem with the elections for the 2019-2024 European Parliament.