An independent commission to review the State's 43 constituencies, including two that now break constitutional rules, will not report for six months, following publication of detailed census figures yesterday.
High Court judge Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill was appointed by Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government Dick Roche to head the Constituency Commission.
Under the Electoral Act, the commission must examine all of the constituencies to see if areas need to be transferred to ensure that voters are, as far as practicable, equally represented in the Oireachtas.
Currently, major disparities exist. Two constituencies, Dublin North and Dublin West clearly breach the Constitution, which stipulates that no TD can represent more than 30,000 people, since each TD will be elected by 30,077 in the case of the four-seat Dublin North and 30,967 in Dublin West.
The other members of the Constituency Commission will be the Clerk of the Dáil, Kieran Coughlan; the Clerk of the Seanad, Deirdre Lane; the Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly; and the secretary general of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Niall Callan.
While the commission has always received six months to do its work in the past, most informed sources spoken to yesterday believed it could be completed more quickly, though still not in time to matter for this election.
The outline constituency population figures were published by the Central Statistics Office a month ago, though little action could have been taken up until the publication of more detailed information yesterday.
The CSO figures graphically illustrate the increasing urbanisation of Dublin and the east coast, with Leinster's population growing by 9 per cent in five years from 2,105,579 to 2,295,123, though Dublin city's population grew by just 2.1 per cent.
The survey shows strongly that the Irish population is now increasingly living in satellite towns and not in the major cities, since Galway is the only city to grow by more than the national increase.
Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford increased by only 4.2 per cent between the last census carried out in 2002 and 2006 compared with the national population increase of 8.2 per cent.
The number of towns with a population greater than 10,000 grew from 28 to 34 and 22 of these are in Leinster. Swords's population rose by 6,832 to 33,998, while Balbriggan's jumped 3,663 to 8,828.
The average population density in the country is 60 persons per square kilometre. Dublin city far surpasses this average with 4,304 people per square kilometre, followed by Cork city which has a population density of 3,015 per square kilometre.
The population of Dublin city and county has risen from 1,122,821 to 1,187,176, a rise of 5.7 per cent. Of that figure, 506,211 live in Dublin city, up from 495,781 in 2002, 194,038 live in Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown, up from 191,792 in 2002.
The population increase is most dramatic in Fingal, where the number has gone to 239,992 from 196,413 - a rise of 22.2 per cent, while in South Dublin it has gone from 238,835 to 246,935, a rise of 3.4 per cent.
