In the House of Parliament amendments are put down, sometimes not in real expectation of their acceptance, but to make a point. If the Minister is not to make a mockery out of the Committee Stage of the Bill he should apply his mind very seriously to the amendments which we have put down in this group. The Minister, in regard to the previous group of amendments concerning the North Leinster area, made some good points from his own particular local knowledge of County Meath. In this instance we have a group of western counties brought together in our series of amendments in this group, hinging particularly on the two counties of Clare and Galway. In this instance, as I quoted last night, we have a specific implication from the Minister's statement in the Dáil, in which he said he would consider any amendment which would mean a four-seater in Clare, preserving Clare's county identity, and a three-seater in West Galway.
In answer to the Minister we have taken him at his word and put down precisely such an amendment to that effect in this group. The amendment which we are now discussing envisages Clare as a county on its own, with some slight addition from County Galway, making a four-seat constituency. It further envisages an amendment to the Schedule in regard to West Galway, in which the Minister has a four-seater, and for which we suggest three seats. All the reason in this matter points to our suggested amendments in this area.
There is an irrefutable logic in our position compared to what the Minister proposes—which is a mutilated three-seater County Clare with the north-western portion taken away and added to West Galway to make a four-seater. By a simple reversal of what the Minister proposes we feel greater weight would be given to logic. This is precisely the sort of approach which should be taken by any impartial judicial or quasi-judicial commission or tribunal. They would look at that combined area and say, "All reason points to maintaining Clare as a county and giving it the four seats to which it is entitled. All reason points to West Galway, based on Galway city and Connemara, being a three-seater." In this way the seven seats in the combined area are properly allocated in accordance with both county boundaries, traditional loyalties and associations, and with the Constitution.
The Minister has chosen the other way of doing this. In order to have West Galway a three-seater he has mutilated the county of Clare and has added to it, as I mentioned last night, an area of County Clare which comes down to the rural district of Ennis. He has that part of County Clare from Ennis to Ennistymon, to Lisdoonvarna and Ballyvaghan linked in with West Galway to form a constituency which goes beyond Clifden.
I went through the townlands and the details of this matter last night and I am not going into further detail now but I should like if the Minister would tell me on this particular point where our logic falls down. The Minister should approach this particular area in a logical and open manner, which is the way in which any Minister should approach the Committee Stage of any legislation coming before these Houses. In many cases the Minister may have had ample excuse for rebuttal, many amendments having been put down more in expectation than anything else.
This is an important amendment in which all logic and reason is on our side and no logic or reason on the side of the Minister. It is a question of how to allocate seven seats while preserving the criteria which we all regard as important. There is, first of all, the constitutional criteria to justify seven seats in the area. Secondly, it is a question of allocating the seats while acknowledging the constitutional criterion of 20,000 people per representative, give or take a tolerance of 1,000 and at the same time not doing any damage to county boundaries or to traditional loyalties and associations.
By adopting our amendments County Clare is preserved almost entirely as a county and the natural units of Galway city and its hinterland and Connemara are contained within the constituency area in which they have been traditionally contained. The Minister knows this is the position and I should like to hear his answer.
We next deal with amendments Nos. 3 and 10 in our group. Amendment No. 3 deals with Clare and amendment No. 10 deals with West Galway. Amendment No. 9 deals with the constituency of East Galway. As a logical follow-on to our main point, which is preserving Clare as a unit and preserving Galway city and Connemara as a unit within one constituency, we move on to the logic of keeping East Galway a five-seat constituency. The remainder of County Galway, based naturally on Tuam, Loughrea and Ballinasloe, together with existing parts of Roscommon, are contained within the present constituency of North-East Galway. We can have five seats in that natural area rather than the Minister's proposal, which is a four-seat constituency. In the interests of flouting county boundaries in Clare and in the interests of inventing a totally artificial constituency in West Galway, the Minister proposes to deprive East Galway of its natural representation of five seats.
The only reason why this is being done in regard to East Galway is that the Minister is well aware that it happens to be a strong Fianna Fáil constituency. The Minister wants to reduce our natural three quotas in that area, where we would get three seats out of five. By a piece of gerrymandering, there would be a situation where well over two quotas in a four-seat constituency will result in only two seats out of four for Fianna Fáil in East Galway. That is the reality of the situation flowing from the totally illogical rearrangement of West Galway and Clare. East Galway must suffer. It is deprived of its natural right to five seats, as we propose in our amendment No. 9 and which has been rejected in the Minister's proposal in the Schedule. The Minister wants to have East Galway reduced to four seats when the hinterlands of Loughrea, Ballinasloe and Tuam—taking those three towns as the three key towns from the location point of view within the whole area of East Galway—combined together justify five seats on a population basis. They are being deprived of a seat because of the Minister's twisted and perverse attitude towards Clare and West Galway.
That is the gist of our proposal in amendment No. 9. In amendments Nos. 3, 9 and 10 a situation is embodied where Clare is deprived of its county right to send four Members to the Dáil. West Galway is given an artificial four seats in order to bring in a third of County Clare with it. The net effect of that is to deprive West Galway of its natural entitlement to five seats and to reduce it to four seats, because there are practically three quotas in that area which would guarantee Fianna Fáil three seats out of five. As the Minister knows from the mechanics of proportional representation, with that sort of first preference vote in a four-seat constituency it would be virtually impossible to get three seats out of four.
Practically a quota of Fianna Fáil voters in a strong Fianna Fáil area are being deprived of a seat in Dáil Éireann because of the machinations by the Minister regarding the whole of Counties Galway and Clare.
The other amendments in the group are Nos. 13, 14, 16 and 18. While these areas are not so important as the key areas I have mentioned in terms of injustice and inequity, we have put down valid amendments to the Minister's proposals. Our main argument contained in these group of amendments is based on what I have just stated in regard to the fundamentally logical approach which is embodied in amendments Nos. 3, 9 and 10 and will result in a clean and fair allocation of seats in Counties Clare and Galway. The amendments I am now going to speak on are less important, though valid in regard to the Minister's proposals.
In amendment No. 13 we suggest that in the Minister's proposals relating to East Mayo, there should be an adjustment which would retain the present situation as between East Mayo and Roscommon. The Minister is breaching county boundaries here and is again interfering with the present constituency arrangement. He is taking specific areas from part of West Roscommon and putting them into East Mayo. He is breaching the Mayo-Roscommon border in the interests of achieving that end. East Mayo, while retaining three seats, can retain them within the existing constituency and county boundaries.
Amendment No. 14 is designed for the same purpose, that is the making of a tidier rearrangement between east and west Mayo and preserving the county territorial identity of County Mayo.
Amendments Nos. 16 and 18 are the further consequential amendments in this group on the basic matter I mentioned initially. These relate to preserving the existing situation regarding Roscommon-Leitrim, a three-seat constituency, and also Sligo-Leitrim. These are adjustments which do least damage to the present constituency situation.
The reasonable approach over the years should be to try to achieve a degree of consistency with regard to the establishment of constituencies, bearing in mind the three principles I mentioned earlier of county identity, traditional loyalty and association and the constitutional requirements. Bearing those in mind there should not be any swinging departure from existing constituency arrangements. This would be the way a judicial or a quasi-judicial commission or tribunal would look at the matter. They would see the situation at it is and would not make any violent departures from the existing constituency situation.
It was in that spirit that we put down the amendments relating to Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon. They are amendments which make for a tidier presentation in that they do not depart violently from the present constituency rearrangement. The Minister has in Roscommon-Leitrim made a very radical change. He has made a very radical change in regard to Sligo-Leitrim involving a breach of the county boundary in Donegal. He has made a radical change in regard to Mayo involving the breach of a county boundary into Roscommon. For some obscure reason—I can only think it must be some corridor machinations in regard to particular Deputies—niggling changes have been made that breach county boundaries and are obviously designed to ensure the re-election of particular favourite sons among the Fine Gael and Labour Parties.
In regard to the Sligo, Leitrim and Mayo constituencies there is no disagreement between us as to numbers. The numbers per constituency agree with us. What we are suggesting is that breaches of county boundaries have been made in Donegal, Leitrim and Roscommon that need not have been made. They were only made by reason of operations behind the scenes in the interests of specific Deputies of particular parties. Indeed the Minister accepted an amendment at a late stage in the Dáil within the Mayo rearrangement. It was an amendment that was obviously designed to suit the requirements of a very popular Fine Gael Deputy in West Mayo.