I had lengthy discussions with the Minister following the Second Stage and when the Bill was mooted I requested that the Minister consider minor amendments regarding the county boundaries of Tipperary North and South without interfering with the independence of the commission's report or adjoining constituencies. I tabled those amendments not to gain political advantage for anybody in Tipperary North or South, but to outline the views expressed by my constituents that their rights as electors in the constituencies of Tipperary North and South have been trampled on.
Private Members' Business. - Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1995: Committee and Final Stages.
Sections 1 to 6, inclusive, agreed to.
Schedule agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported without amendment and received for final consideration.
Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."
I hesitate to constrain the Deputy, but discussion at this Stage is confined to what is in the Bill.
I am speaking to the Bill.
Perhaps the Deputy would make a brief comment regarding what is in the Bill.
I am speaking to what is in the Bill and that is the problem. In spite of my best endeavours as a Government backbencher, contacts with a Minister in my party, other Ministers and Ministers of State and recognising that the Government wanted to accept in principle the recommendations laid down by the commission, it is important that, on behalf of my constituents, I express my grave reservations about what is in the Bill, particularly the Schedule as it relates to Tipperary North and South.
I asked that the Minister and the Government consider the minimum changes I proposed which would not alter the thrust of the report, the number of seats, but would have regard to the views of the public in the areas to which I referred on Second Stage. I should not let this opportunity pass without restating my grave reservations about the Bill.
The Constitution states that the Oireachtas is the final arbiter in this regard. The rights of the people in Cappawhite and Donohill and their normal affinity with Tipperary town and county council electoral areas, such as Cashel with Tipperary South County Council, have been disregarded. The commission by drawing a pen through the townland of Ballingarry ensured that the village of Ballingarry fell within the constituency of Tipperary South and the remainder of the parish is transferred to the constituency of Tipperary North. As a representative of Tipperary South, it is ridiculous that I will have to drive through Tipperary North to get back to Tipperary South to serve the people in the Ballingarry area. That type of division of a constituency and a parish is ridiculous. The people are annoyed and feel disenfranchised.
Nobody has taken from the commission's work or condemned it for carrying out necessary work, but people in offices in this city should not disregard the people of rural Ireland, rather they should consider their suggestions. I am disappointed that the Government has not listened to my pleas in regard to the Bill because they would not interfere with the legitimacy of what the commission was seeking to achieve.
I asked and had hoped that the Government would table an amendment because it would be inappropriate for me to table one. I was given an assurance by Oireachtas Members from all parties in Tipperary North and South that they agreed with what I was trying to do and considered that I was probably someone with sufficient influence to achieve it. I am disappointed I have failed in that regard. This is my last opportunity to state the case on behalf of those people. If this Bill is passed without any Government reference to that anomaly, those people having been represented by me, the Ceann Comhairle and others for many years will find themselves for the first time in a constituency with a mountain dividing them from their public representatives in Tipperary North. I am elected to speak for them and, irrespective of the political consequences of what I am saying it is a shame we have disregarded their rights.
I support what Deputy Ferris said. My colleague, Deputy Michael Smith, was the first to raise this matter on Second Stage when he pointed out, as Deputy Ferris stated, that it is ludicrous that parishes will be split, and I agree.
It was suggested at that stage that if there were all-party agreement, changes could be made. As there appeared to be all-party agreement on this issue, it is regrettable the Minister did not see fit to make the changes requested. The Deputies from both parts of Tipperary made very good cases.
It is grossly unfair to ask Deputies to cover the Mayo constituency. I worked in County Mayo for a year and know how large it is. It is not possible for public representatives to properly represent such a large constituency. It is also regrettable that the Minister did not see fit to make changes requested for that constituency.
I am one of the Deputies who must cover the Mayo constituency. It is fine for members of the commission to sit at their desks in Dublin and make decisions that will affect rural areas about which they have no understanding but when this Bill is enacted, Mayo Deputies will devote most of their attention to the towns of Castlebar, Ballina and Westport where the concentration of votes will be. The outlying areas of Charlestown, Blacksod and Belmullet will be ignored. I travel 185 miles to Belmullet once a month and still do not have one-quarter of the Erris area covered. Erris is as big as County Louth.
What is proposed is disgraceful. It is all very fine for the commission to examine figures and maps and claim that County Mayo is a small percentage short of the number of people required to retain a two seat constituency. Since I was elected to the House many powers have been taken away from Ministers. Even today a Bill was introduced which will devolve powers to a medicines board. For far too long we have been taking powers from Ministers and giving them to commissions. Members of such commissions are not aware of what takes place in rural Ireland. I challenge members of the electoral commission to visit Mayo and see the position for themselves. Some time ago I tabled a question seeking information on the distance from Blacksod to Dublin and received an incorrect answer. In view of that, how could members of the commission judge how people in the west should be represented?
This is a bad Bill and were it not for the party system I would be voting against it. The Labour, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats Parties should come together and refuse to accept the commission's decision because it is not a correct one for the people of Tipperary and Mayo. As a public representative I cannot be expected to cover the Charlestown and Blacksod areas in one day. Last weekend I was expected to cover the Ballinrobe, Castlebar and Belmullet areas. That is not possible for any public representative. When this Bill is passed there will be more by-elections because Deputies will drive at speed through their constituencies and perhaps be killed in accidents. Deputies should be provided with helicopters to cover their constituencies.
Unlike my colleagues, my constituency will be unaffected by this change, but we are at the bottom of the league as far as population per Member is concerned. The constituency of Sligo-Leitrim has 20,014 population per Member of the Dáil, a variation from the national average of minus 5.76 per cent. I do not know what changes will be made in the future but, despite what Deputy Ring said, I am glad a commission has been established.
However, I am extremely disappointed the commission did not avail of this opportunity to reverse the ridiculous decision of the previous commission to join Roscommon in Connacht with Longford in Leinster. In doing that, it not only crossed a major physical barrier in the Shannon, but the provincial barrier, the Euro constituency barrier and the barrier of the ancient kingdom. The people in Roscommon are represented by Deputy Connor from Fine Gael. In bygone times the local chieftains in Longford were more used to knocking each others heads off than co-operating in one constituency.
We operate an excellent proportional representation system that returns party Deputies almost in proportion to their support nationally. Admittedly it brings in the odd maverick and the odd partly off the wall Deputy, but probably only in proportion to the number of such people outside the House. The proportional representation system provides stability. A Government's term of office is now four years and, having regard to the way in which parties on all sides are hopping into bed with each other, there is little danger of us not having a Government. We now have political promiscuity.
All parties should come together and examine our electoral system. Ninety-five per cent of our time is spent on constituency work, and not legislating as should be the case. We cannot carry out proper research or other necessary work because, if we do, we will not get reelected. It is pointless being a great legislator unless one is a Member of the House in which legislation is passed. All parties should have the courage to come together and introduce a new system. As demonstrated on two occasions recently, we will not get a single party Government. The public want some form of proportional representation, but there could be variations of that system. It is not possible to have good legislators under the present system. However, I am glad we have a commission to implement the changes proposed in the Bill. Some of the Minister's predecessors were electoral engineers. They succeeded in moving some of their party's votes from one side of a river to the other and as a result returned more of their members to the Dáil. At least that can no longer happen. Overall I welcome the changes, but I object to the position in the Longford-Roscommon constituency and I am sure the changes in Tipperary and Mayo will cause local difficulties.
With the exception of the last speaker, only the wounded are contributing tonight. The Constitution states that constituency boundaries must be redrawn every 12 years at a maximum. Therefore, it is unconstitutional for Deputies to be changed from one constituency to another in a shorter period of time. Twelve years is a reasonable timeframe. It is the equivalent of a farmer leasing land for a five-year period, ploughing, drilling and sowing it — and in my case, draining it — yet when the crop is ready somebody else harvests it. I consider that to be an unconstitutional method of redrawing constituencies. Assuming that an independent commission will continue to recommend the redrawing of constituencies, I advocate that its membership remain unchanged for the maximum period. It is unconstitutional when 21 constituencies have not been changed but another 21 have been severely changed, while others have been changed only slightly. That is not a fair way of conducting business. Furthermore, if every constituency was altered in the same way or if there were fewer alterations, our representation would be totally unbalanced. For example, it does not make sense to take an area from one end of west Galway and add to it at another or, if a constituency is overpopulated, to reduce the overall area.
I can concur with much of what has been said. On the other hand, it is easy to blame a commission for taking decisions based on the terms of references we have given it and not have sufficient courage to direct its members in the way in which we would like them to operate. The advantage of such a commission is that it can divide constituencies in an impartial manner but it is our job to direct its membership vis-á-vis the structure under which they must function.
I agree with what has been said about the position in County Mayo, in that I have always argued that some cognisance should be taken of the size of a constituency, particularly sparsely populated ones. Probably I am one of the few Members who has no complaint about the present boundaries redrawn, while I did have some about the previous review. Therefore, I can view this more objectively. However, I did complain that in the old Galway West constituency cognisance was not taken of the fact that there were four offshore islands that had to be serviced. Without any disrespect to the electorate of Dublin — recognising that they have Bull Island and Ireland's Eye — or other city constituencies, it is very difficult to service offshore islands whose people are entitled to the same service and to meet their public representatives as their counterparts on the mainland. The same problem obtains in County Mayo with two offshore islands inhabited.
We might well have included those offshore islands in the terms of reference of the commission since it has been suggested that, in sparsely populated rural areas, we should opt for three-seat or four-seat constituencies, but we did not write in that stipulation this time, which is where the flaw occurred. Let us call a spade a spade; we could have written it in but we balked at doing so and we are now reaping the reward.
The commission was asked to take cognisance of it.
If Deputy Nealon checks the commission's terms of reference he will discover they were changed this time. Previously it was recommended that there be five-seat constituencies in densely populated areas but that was not advocated this time.
If we are talking about moving away from four and five seat constituencies or the possibility of encountering difficulties effecting constitutional change, I might point out that there is no constitutional barrier to our deciding to have three seat constituencies of a uniform size nationwide; there is nothing to prevent us doing that. To a certain extent it would make a lot of sense that we would all represent three-seat constituencies rather than some three, some four and others five, irrespective of which part of the country we represent.
If we are serious about reform there are ways and means of doing so. I have always objected to the list system. I do not like the idea of a party being able to decide that if a person wants to vote for a specific party, the candidates will be placed in order and the party will decide who will top the list——
The Deputy must bring his remarks to a conclusion. I want to facilitate the Minister of State who offered earlier.
Under our present system, and on the basis of a lack of tolerence tested in the famous court case of the sixties, it appears to me to be farcical to take small slices of counties and place them neatly in others. For example, the electorate of east Kildare were put into Wicklow and are now back in Kildare but a portion of Carlow has been appended to Wicklow. There was another example where a portion of County Galway adjacent to me was placed into County Mayo — thank God it has been put back into County Galway — but the electorate concerned still resorted to their Galway representatives because the local authority offices and everything else was located in Galway.
Although I doubt that a referendum is necessary to avoid that type of farcical arrangement, I think the electorate would be very quick to pass it. When this Bill has been passed — I agree with Deputy McCormack that the membership of the commission should not be altered more frequently than every 12 years — it might be well for us all, after the recess, to examine this issue in the cold light of day and endeavour to advance some long term proposals to improve the present electoral position.
This debate certainly confirmed the old adage that one cannot please all of the people all of the time.
I listened with a certain amount of understanding and sympathy to Members' comments. I would not predict any likelihood of a subsidy for helicopters. Members will also understand that I will not propose any change in the recommendations of the commission which would set an unfortunate precedent and undermine the work of any future commission. Since the establishment of the first commission in 1977 the Oireachtas has never changed recommendations presented in legislative form and I do not consider it would be appropriate to deviate from the good practice of previous Governments. We must accept these recommendations as a package. Therefore, I would not agree to any change.
I should like to avail of this opportunity to thank the chairman of the commission, Mr. Justice Richard Johnson and its members who lived up to their hard task conscientiously and impartially. It is only right that we record our thanks to them.
On the points Deputy Ó Cuív raised, when debating the Electoral Bill, 1994, it will be possible to examine the terms of reference of such commissions. This time the minimum of restrictions were imposed on the commission but we can debate that matter further then.
It would not be correct to say, as did Deputy Eoin Ryan, there is all-party agreement or anything like it to implement changes, minor or otherwise, in the recommendations. I do not think anybody in this House wishes to revert to the bad old days, good precedent having been established by Governments in which the Deputy's party participated. We must be consistent and aware of the dangers of any proposed change.
Not if done in public, which is the purpose of this House.
So much for openness, transparency and accountability.
The point raised by Deputy Nealon on the general electoral system is not something with which we could deal in the context of this Bill. We must remember that multi-Member constituencies and the single transferable vote system were enshrined in our Constitution so that any change would necessitate constitutional amendment.
I expect these issues to be considered by the Expert Group on the Constitution now functioning under its chairman, Dr. T.K. Whitaker and next year they will be examined by the all party Oireachtas Committee on the review of the Constitution when no doubt the Deputy will have an opportunity to air his views on our electoral system.
I thank Members for the views they have expressed. I do not think it would be possible to have unanimous approval of all the recommendations but the fact that the vast majority of Members are satisfied, in itself, is an indication of their acceptance.
Question put and agreed to.