The recommendations from the Electoral Commission on the redrawing of constituency size and boundaries published yesterday, after much speculation and nail-biting by politicians, describe the constituency battlegrounds for the next general election campaign. Parties and candidates will spend the coming weeks analysing the implications.
The headline findings were clear from the moment the commission released its report yesterday morning: 14 more TDs, bringing the size of the next Dáil to 174, spread across 43 constituencies, an increase of four since 2020. There will be 13 three-seat constituencies (an increase of four), 15 four-seaters and 15 (up from 13) five-seaters. Three-seat constituencies tend to suit the larger parties more, and they were on balance happier than the smaller parties with the results of yesterday’s report; most of them had lobbied the commission for more five-seaters. The Green Party made the argument within Government for changing the law to permit constituencies larger than five seats – but the Greens lost that argument to Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
It is an argument to which the political system should return in the future. The commission’s chairwoman, Supreme Court judge Marie Baker, and its chief executive Art O’Leary, made clear yesterday that the body intends to carry out research into whether the Dáil should continue to grow in line with the population, as it must do unless the Constitution is changed. It will also, as Ms Justice Baker says in The Irish Times today, “commence and guide a national conversation” about the size of constituencies, and in particular whether the current statutory limit of five seats is best suited to the more diverse Ireland of the 2020s. It is a timely conversation.
The proposed revisions will not please everybody. The commission allowed a greater divergence from the national average than before – essentially meaning that TDs in some constituencies will represent more people than those in others. While that has always been case, the margins have been stretched. This was in order to limit the number of constituency changes. A lower rate of variance from the national average, or indeed a higher number of TDs, would have meant a much more intrusive set of changes to the existing set of constituencies. The balance arrived at by the commission seems a reasonable compromise.
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Formally established by statute only this year, the new commission, whose status as a body independent from politics is essential, will become one of the most important public bodies in Ireland. Much work lies ahead; it is also tasked with oversight of the electoral register, providing information in referendum campaigns, addressing political misinformation, regulating online advertising and increasing turnout – every one of them a tall order. But it has made a good start.