As I was saying before Private Members' Time, there are three counties in my constituency. There is no other Deputy who depends on support from three counties. I live in the centre and I know from personal experience the troubles caused by having counties split up. There are different county councils. There is also the attitude of the people. It is hard to get people who lived all their lives in Mullingar or Kilbeggan to realise that they are now in Kildare constituency. They know when they are voting, but still if anything happens in the rest of the county of Westmeath, their minds turn immediately to it. When there was a controversy in Westmeath, I had the utmost trouble at my own meetings in getting the people to talk and think about what was happening in Kildare, and if I did not keep control of the meetings, they would talk about Westmeath. When Labour or Fine Gael representatives come into Kildare, they find they are with another body and they cannot feel at home, and it is the same with the people. When you have been used to one county, you like to stay there.
From my own experience, I am safe in saying that 85 or 90 per cent of the people who call to my house to see me live within a radius of 15 or 20 miles of the house. If I am to serve the rest of the people, I must go out and meet them in different parts of the constituency. I have offices all over the constituency and they can meet me there. People do not want to travel too far, and it is not fair to expect them to travel long distances to find their representative. If we had single-member constituencies, it would be quite simple. They would all know their Member of Parliament and he in turn would know their problems. He would know every single one of them and he would know all the roads and laneways in the area. It is very hard to get to know people over a big area. Those are some of the advantages of the single-member constituency.
There is no Member who would refuse to try to help someone who had worked against him at a previous election. I have often had people who worked against me at an election coming to me after a while—maybe not the next day but after a month or two—to do some favour for them, or to give them some assistance with a Department, to try to hurry up a grant or something like that.
