I am on amendment No. 1, but I shall move on in a moment. This attitude is very surprising, especially for a Government who held out some ray of hope when they went into office that they would act in an enlightened manner. This is positive proof of the depths to which the Government have sunk. The next amendment, No. 8, proposes certain changes in pages 5, 6 and 7 of the Bill. It proposes deleting the entries relating to the constituencies of Mid County Dublin, North County Dublin, South County Dublin, West County Dublin and Dún Laoghaire, and replacing them with new constituencies.
The constituencies proposed by us in our amendment are : a three-seater in South-West County Dublin; a five-seater in North County Dublin; a four-seater in South County Dublin and a five-seater in Dún Laoghaire. There is nothing sacrosanct about the size, the names or the areas of those constituencies or about the areas included in each of the amendments I propose. I am not saying this is the most perfect way in which it could have been done. I am saying that changes similar to these would have allowed for the allocation of three of these new seats to the Dublin area rather than five. That must be borne in mind in all our thinking in drawing up these amendments. I have no strong feelings as to whether North County Dublin should be a three, four or five-seater; whether South County Dublin should be a four, a three or a five-seater, or Dún Laoghaire a three, four or five-seater. I have shown that by availing of the tolerance allowed by the Supreme Court decision the Minister could have topped up these Dublin constituencies, still stayed within the constitutional limit and allocated three new seats to Dublin.
That is amendment No. 8. There is not much point in delaying the House with the actual details. My own words will indicate that I do not see much point in listing them here because I do not hold that it is the most perfect way in which to do it or that there is anything sacrosanct about the exact areas, names and sizes. But it is a way which, overall, would have meant a fairer result.
Amendment No. 9 refers to changes in pages 7 and 8 of the Bill and reads:
... to delete the entries relating to the constituencies of Dublin (Artane), Dublin (Ballyfermot), Dublin (Cabra), Dublin (Clontarf), Dublin (Finglas), Dublin North-Central, Dublin (Rathmines West), Dublin South-Central, Dublin South-East....
and then proposes to substitute the constituencies proposed in my amendment. Those constituencies are: a three-seater in Dublin North-Central; a three-seater in Dublin North-East; a three-seater in Dublin (Artane); a three-seater in Dublin (Finglas); a three-seater in Dublin (Cabra); a three-seater in Dublin South-Central; a three-seater in Dublin South-East and a three-seater in Dublin (Rathmines West). If one takes a closer look at my amendments one will see that, as far as possible, I have tried to apply what I imagined was the criterion the Minister was applying. He laid down the criterion that he wanted three-seater constituencies. He has not explained satisfactorily or adequately to the House why he choose a three-seater constituency in a densely-populated area like Dublin. But I have accepted that as the premise on which I have made my amendments; that we draw up the amendments on the basis he has laid down, on his own criterion of three-seaters. By comparing the Minister's table in his explanatory memorandum, the population per Member, and the deviation from the national average population per Member as shown in that table, one can see that all I have done is to add further electoral areas—or wards as they are called in the county borough area of Dublin—to the constituencies and in that way, brought them above the population per Member that the Minister laid down in his Bill but still did not exceed, at any stage, the maximum number per population allowed by the Constitution.
This shows the clever, devious means used by the Minister to try to boost the number of seats in Dublin by taking a lower figure than was allowable. My amendments show clearly that by going for the higher figure per population per Member, staying within the maximum allowable by the Constitution and the decision of the Supreme Court, we could have ended up with something similar to the Minister's own constituencies, only slightly larger, but having the great difference that overall, we would end up with 41 under my amendments, which is 38 plus three new seats being created in those various constituencies and which we claim is the only fair way of doing it; fair to the people of Dublin and fair mostly to the people in rural Ireland. This has not been done. That was the thinking behind my amendments and I have shown that it can be done.
Marvellous statements and claims were made by speakers behind the Minister in the Second Stage debate on this Bill. It is quite obvious they made no study of the figures whatsoever. They got up, like good little boys, behind the Minister—as marshalled at that stage—supported him, told him he was doing a marvellous job because that is what they were told to tell him. But some people on the Minister's side made some stupid statements. Saying that there was not adequate population in the west to retain anything more than 28 seats was an outright untruth; was a device used by Government members to try to justify what the Minister is doing here; to try to cover up what he is doing and cloak over the discrimination contained in this document.
The next amendment is No. 12 which proposes changes in page 9 of the Bill and reads as follows:
In page 9, in the second column of the entry relating to the constituency of Kildare, to delete all words after "except" and substitute the following:
"the part thereof which is comprised in the constituency of Meath".
In the Minister's Bill he proposes that the constituency of Kildare be a three-seater. I have followed that in my amendment. The Minister proposes that the constituency of Kildare shall comprise the administrative county of Kildare except the parts thereof which are comprised in the constituencies of West County Dublin and Meath. Therefore, we see that the Minister has put portion of Kildare into County Dublin and has put another portion into County Meath. According to the Minister he has been striving in this revision Bill to maintain county boundaries. It would be much wiser for the Minister to drop that claim because any reading of the Bill will show that that has not been done. Indeed, I accept that it would have been very difficult for the Minister to have complied with county boundaries, but it is rather ludicrous to continue to make the claim that he did make great efforts to maintain them. I suppose the Minister did make some effort but it was not very great because the crossing of county boundaries is quite substantial. The Minister's proposal is that there should be three seats in County Kildare, excepting the portions going into Counties Dublin and Meath.
It is interesting to note that the counties of Kildare and Meath have very similar population figures. In fact, in the 1971 census, there were more persons recorded as being resident in County Kildare than in County Meath. One could argue that if one or other of these was to be made a four-scater constituency, on the grounds of fairness and justice, it should be Kildare. But the Minister choose to cut down Kildare by putting one portion of it into County Dublin and another into Meath, and made the four-seater constituency in County Meath which has not as high a population as County Kildare. When one sees something like that one has to look behind it and one wonders: why did he do that? Then one suddenly realises that that is the Minister's own constituency——
