The Boundary Review Commission, which redraws constituencies to cope with population changes, should create six-seat Dáil constituencies at the expense of three-seaters, Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore has said. Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent, reports.
One-third of all Dáil constituencies are now three-seaters, he told a party meeting in Limerick last night, where some are still aggrieved that the county will be split between three different constituencies in the next election.
He said he fully understood "the anger felt by many people" following the commission's recommendation that 14,000 Limerick voters should transfer into Kerry North. "This is one of a number of recommendations made in the report the logic of which, quite frankly, is difficult to understand," he told the Kilfinane meeting.
Saying that he respected the independence of the commission, and the integrity of its members, Mr Gilmore said "they are not, any more than the rest of us, infallible".
Calling for bigger constituencies, he said the commission was fundamentally required to ensure "the share of the votes a party gets and the number of seats it secures" are as close as possible.
"More than one-third of all constituencies are now three-seaters, the configuration that produces the least proportional outcome. Kerry South, because the Ceann Comhairle is automatically returned, will actually become a two-seater, which comes close to rendering the constitutional right of the people of Kerry South to proportional representation null and void," he said.
The commission's terms of reference should be changed by the Oireachtas to require it to ensure that a party's share of seats should be in the same proportion to its share of the first preference votes, as long as the party gets above 2 per cent of the vote.
Mr Gilmore said the commission should first produce a preliminary report, then take soundings, and only then produce final boundary changes. "This would at least allow people who believe that a particular recommendation is illogical, irrational or inconsistent with the commission's own terms of reference, to make that point."