The Constituency Commission has been urged by the Labour Party to implement sweeping changes in the current boundaries and significantly increase the number of five-seat constituencies in order to make the electoral system fairer.
The commission is due to publish a report in the autumn which is expected to result in an extensive revision of the current 43 Dáil constituencies to take account of the significant population changes revealed in the census taken last year.
The vast bulk of the 173 submissions submitted to the commission by the July 31st deadline make the case for specific constituency changes, but the Labour Party argues that the preservation of existing constituency boundaries "should not be elevated to the status of a goal".
The Green Party and the Progressive Democrats argued for specific and significant changes in the current constituencies, but Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael made no national submissions although individual TDs and units of both organisations made submissions relating to different constituencies.
The Labour submission did not argue for any specific changes but urged the creation of the maximum possible number of five- seat constituencies in order to meet the constitutional requirement of proportionality.
It maintained that the core function of the Constituency Commission should be to ensure that there can be no mismatch in overall terms between the votes secured at the next election and the seats gained in the next Dáil. "This is best ensured by creating the greatest feasible number of constituencies designated to return the greatest feasible number of members," it says.
"A considerably larger number of voters are represented by the candidate of their choice in five- seat constituencies. That is, after all, the object of PR-STV. Overall, the figures go to show that the greater the number of three- and four-seat constituencies added to the mix, the more disproportionate - or skewed the outcome of the election will be."
The Labour submission said that the last Constituency Commission in 2004 confined itself to "interfering" only where action was triggered by deviation beyond a specified range, and it argued against such an approach this time around.
It pointed out that in a significant High Court judgment earlier this summer, in a case taken by two outgoing TDs, Catherine Murphy and Finian McGrath, there was a return to first principles. The court held that there was a very significant disparity between the proportionality of constituency populations to the numbers of deputies.
"The High Court corrected the impression that a standard of 5 per cent or 8 per cent variance was judicially sanctioned and accepted. In fact, something much closer to a figure between 1 per cent and 1.66 per cent had been approved by the High Court in 1961. The Constituency Commission should therefore not concentrate solely or even largely on constituencies with variances exceeding any particular percentage from a national average or representation," Labour argued.
"The commission's task is to draw up the most proportionate constituencies that are feasible having regard to the practical and relevant considerations. And, given that a change in one constituency has knock-on effects on its neighbours, none of the existing constituencies can be said to be more constitutional than others."
The Green Party in its submission makes a number of specific proposals for constituency changes. Extensive changes are proposed in a number of constituencies, but not in those where the party has a TD. The Greens propose that the two three-seat constituencies in Kerry and Donegal should be amalgamated into five-seaters and that Louth and Dublin North should gain a seat to become five-seaters.
On the south side of Dublin, which is currently over-represented, the Greens propose that Dublin South West should lose a seat, but that Dún Laoghaire, Dublin South, Dublin Mid County and Dublin South East, should retain their current number of seats through boundary adjustments. Dublin South West is the only one of these constituencies where the Greens do not have a TD. On the northside of Dublin the party is proposing a new five-seat constituency from the current Dublin North Central and North East.
The Progressive Democrats in a 52-page submission make a similar suggestion about the creation of a new five-seat constituency on the northside of the capital called Dublin East, as well as the addition of a seat to Dublin West and Dublin North to take account of the big expansion of population in those areas.
Unlike the Greens, the party accepts the need for a reduction in the number of seats in the Dún Laoghaire-Dublin South region. The PDs propose that Dún Laoghaire should lose one in the shake-up.
The former Independent TD, Catherine Murphy, who took the High Court action to test the legality of the constituency arrangements used in the recent election, made a submission based on the court judgment of Mr Justice Frank Clarke, which also provided the basis of the Labour Party submission.
