Sir, – David McWilliams is right that a revenue-raising mayor for Dublin is long overdue ("Covid-19 and Zoom will not finish off Dublin" Opinion & Analysis, January 30th).
An additional possibility is to give a dedicated Dáil constituency to the most central local electoral areas of Dublin city: the north inner city, the southeast inner city, and the southwest inner city. The creation of a Dublin City constituency would have at least three advantages.
Currently inner-city local authority areas are swallowed up in constituencies that have more suburban hinterlands whose concerns always seem to be addressed first; having a dedicated Dublin City constituency would thus concentrate the minds of TDs on issues “inside the canals”.
Second, all of the TDs for Dublin City would presumably live in the inner city.
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Third, a constituency encompassing both sides of the Liffey would end the Northside-Southside partitioning that frequently impedes good policy – and give representation to the Liffey area itself, which is too often sadly neglected.
As an added bonus, this solution could be had for the price of drawing a circle on a map. – Yours, etc,
JM MANCINI,
Dublin 8.