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The Census problem
Read more about: Cavan-Monaghan, Census, Democracy, Dublin West
So it’s Dublin West. We noted a while back that the Census results had the potential for a tricky constitutional problem: that a constituency might have grown too quickly to maintain its constitutional minimum of 1 TD per 30,000 voters. And it’s happened. RTE explains: The constituency of Dublin West had the highest number of persons per TD at 30,933, after recording an increase of nearly 27% in population since 2002.
Since the problem was predictable (as in fact is the opposite one, the risk of being too small for 1 TD per 20,000 — watch out Cavan-Monaghan), this will be a test of whether the Attorney-General’s office is any more of top of things since the statutory rape fiasco. As we said before, our preferred long-term solution is an amendment lifting the ratio to 1 TD per 50,000; the Dail is already very large relative to population.
UPDATE: Thursday’s Irish Times has further explanation. It states that the constitutional provision that is violated is more likely to be one requiring that constituencies be as equally proportioned in terms of population per TD as possible. The 20,000-30,000 interval apparently applies at national and not consitituency level, although of course the courts can be full of surprises!
The Dáil is not at all large relative to population. Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland have a similar ratio of population to parliamentary representative. See http://www.election.polarbears.com/art0018.htm for a graph of representative ratio for various European countries.
An equally serious problem with the Census is that Dublin North (4 seats) has a larger population greater than Dublin South (5 seats)
I wonder if Copernicus has a view on the fitness for purpose of the AGs office and its personnel.
I also should have mentioned that it’s Cork North-Central and not Cavan-Monaghan that came closest to violating the 20,000 rule this time.
Somehow I wonder if the last Boundary Commission wasn’t hoping the election would have been done and dusted by now and the point of the impact of new census figures would be a mute one. I can see this doing real damaga in places that might lose a seat and be of no benefit to FF in particular, but the government parties generally in areas that gain a seat. Another seat in Dublin North won’t save FF’s second one and DL losing one would appear to kill O’Malley’s chances completely and might even do for Barry Andrews. And thus are just 2 places.
Why would Dun Laoighre Rathdown lose a seat when the county population has increased, albeit only slightly?
The problem is with Dún Laoghaire constituency, not the county. It lost population and now is one of the smallest ratios of population per TD in the country, and therefore has some of the biggest variation in that ratio from the highest ratio, Dublin West. I’d say that there’s no way that they can keep the 5 seats in a re-drawing but in fact if they have to redo the map, the entire look of the constituency may have to change. I have a link to the CSO table with all the constituency populations in the post.
P,
Thanks for directing me to that table. I could see problems in that were the DLR constituency to be reduced to four seats this time it would most likely have to be raised to five again next time as the population figure resumed a rational path.
I think we need to change the constitution not the electoral boundaries, 30,000 to one T.D isn’t that much we could easily push it to the max been 50,000 per T.D. If we leave it at 30,000 we will continously have to keep changing the electoral boundaries and the amount of seats each constituency has.