Census and constituency boundaries

L1011

Prelim census results are out today and push the population per TD to a shade over 30,000; the constitutional maximum. There'll have to be one extra TD and based on the figures given, it'll be in Dublin somewhere. Really does make a mockery of people actually believing the "we'll cut 20 TDs" claim made by FG and others during the 2011 GE when we're going to be within 7 of the old figure by law!

Speculation on what reshuffling will happen might be a bit more Cafe-worthy. With both Kildare North and Kildare South now over, but not anywhere near enough for an 8th TD (even with the bits moved to Laois last time) I can see further bits of Kildare South being fired out to other constituencies for one.

http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpr/censusofpopulation2016-preliminaryresults/geochan/

Fr Tod Umptious

Was the TD to population ratio looked at in the recent constitution convention.

There is no use in the numbers of TDs being reduced if the constitution suggests a certain ratio.

L1011

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

Was the TD to population ratio looked at in the recent constitution convention.

There is no use in the numbers of TDs being reduced if the constitution suggests a certain ratio.

No.

Constitution requires one per 20k-30k

the groutch

it would make sense to have a referendum to amend the limits, it's a major issue if you're having to redraw the boundaries and adjust the number of TDs for EVERY general election going forward.

the groutch

the groutch wrote: »

it would make sense to have a referendum to amend the limits, it's a major issue if you're having to redraw the boundaries and adjust the number of TDs for EVERY general election going forward.

and the figure of one per 20k/30k means we have an awful lot more TDs than we really need...

BoJack Horseman

the groutch wrote: »

it would make sense to have a referendum to amend the limits

Better to have a referendum to remove the line-item completely.

It's one of the myriad of things packed into our overly long constitution that can be managed no worse via parliamentary statute.

Charles Babbage

20-30,000 is a wide band, it shouldn't need that many adjustments, especially if fast growing areas were set a bit low in the first place.

newacc2015

Dont forget when the free state was formed the population flat lined at around 3 million people for nearly 40 years and it finally started to gave in the 1960s. This 30k limit was introduced when people just assumed out population was either going to stay the same or decrease. I seriously doubt they ever thought the population would increase

IMO the less TD's, the better. The fact there is so many politicans for a small country means TD's are fixated on local issues rather than national issues

BOHtox

You would think 158-166 TDs is loads for a country of our size. Correct me if I'm wrong but would a referendum to change the "one td per 20-30000 constituents" be way down the pecking order when you consider we will probably have one on the 8th amendment and Article 41.

sword1

BOHtox wrote: »

You would think 158-166 TDs is loads for a country of our size. Correct me if I'm wrong but would a referendum to change the "one td per 20-30000 constituents" be way down the pecking order when you consider we will probably have one on the 8th amendment and Article 41.

Is there a limit to how many issues can be in a referendum, surely the more questions dealt with the better value we get, politicians are not going to look to decrease the amount of them,its like turkeys looking for Christmas

the groutch

sword1 wrote: »

politicians are not going to look to decrease the amount of them,its like turkeys looking for Christmas

they did reduce it by 8, and the current amount is at the minimum they could constitutionally function with.
in theory they could increase the number of TDs to over 200 if they wanted and still be within the 20k-30k range.

the constitutional amendment would have nothing to do with decreasing the amount, it would be a case of removing the need to keep on re-increasing the number of TDs, and redrawing boundary lines every five years.

Quin_Dub

The 30k limit is way too low..

The UK currently have 650 MP's which is 1 MP for every ~92k people or about 65k voters. And they are talking about reducing the number to 600 MPs..

Whilst moving out to that level would probably mean too few TD's surely something like 1 for every 50k , with concessions for geography, would be far more sensible..

It also should not be in the constitution...

L1011

Quin_Dub wrote: »

It also should not be in the constitution...

I'd say a good half of the constitution shouldn't be in it - plenty of stuff that should be dealt with in legislation instead.

UK has one constituency with a population of ~140k and even their absolute lowest are near 30k.

511

In Sweden, they have 349 MPs representing a population of: 9,875,378. That works out to be: 28,296 per MP.

Not a big fan of the UK first-past-the-post system. I'M not sure we should be using it has a measuring stick because there's a lot of disgruntled voters and many of them are ignored because an MP they didn't want in now represents them. Ireland proportional representation is much better, we have a few TD to confront about issues.

How do other countries constituencies weight up to Ireland's?

Population details from here - (1/1/2015)

MP #s from google/wiki pages so liable for error

Population #MPs Pop per MP
Lithuania 2,986,100 141 21,178
Slovenia 2,062,900 90 22,921
Finland 5,471,800 200 27,359
Sweden 9,747,400 349 27,930
Croatia 4,225,300 151 27,982
Ireland 4,625,900 158 29,278
Bulgaria 7,202,200 240 30,009
Denmark 5,659,700 179 31,618
Slovakia 5,421,300 150 36,142
Portugal 10,374,800 230 45,108
Belgium 11,258,400 150 75,056
Italy 60,795,600 630 96,501
UK 64,100,000 650 98,615
Netherlands 16,900,700 150 112,671
France 66,352,500 577 114,996
Germany 81,174,000 630 128,848
Spain 46,439,900 350 132,685

glacial_pace71

Although the constitution specifies the 20,000-30,000 range the Electoral Acts add quite a few other criteria that the Constituency Commission are to follow.

At present there are some glaring contradictions, e.g. the Commission are to have regard to county boundaries, continuity between revisions, population density and so forth but the current Govt's declared policy of restricting the potential increase in TDs to just 2 (i.e. to 160) will leave it at the constitutional ceiling and liable to further substantial revision in 5 years' time.

However, you'd have to retain a degree of sympathy for Coveney. The census shows an extra 170,000 people. The last thing he could do would be to say "oh a long-term constituency plan could be devised within a range of 27,500 persons per TD, which would survive several census periods, and so I'm revising the Electoral Acts accordingly", as the inevitable jumping up and down would be from the opposition benches: "we asked for more schools, hospitals, Gardaí. They gave us yet more politicians!".

For what it's worth, the Constituency Commission will be taking submissions via their website. As you can see, the Ministerial order specified a range of 153-160, i.e. knowing that the lower end of that range is unconstitutional.

http://www.constituency-commission.ie/cc/cc-estab.html

Unfortunately they're stuck with an entirely futile exercise in working out a set of boundaries that won't dismember a number of existing constituencies and significantly breach county boundaries, and which are guaranteed to be subject to complete revision in 5 years' time.

Lt Dan

newacc2015 wrote: »

Dont forget when the free state was formed the population flat lined at around 3 million people for nearly 40 years and it finally started to gave in the 1960s. This 30k limit was introduced when people just assumed out population was either going to stay the same or decrease. I seriously doubt they ever thought the population would increase

IMO the less TD's, the better. The fact there is so many politicans for a small country means TD's are fixated on local issues rather than national issues

Agreed, considering the TD is suppose to be about National Issues (let us not laugh) and not parish pump politics (seriously, let us not laugh) there is no justification for that many TD's .

There are only 3 MEP's for Dublin, and 4 for the massive geographical area of Midlands/North West/Connacht.

The idea that , in theory, a small County like Longford could have 2 TD's (in practice it probably would not happen, unless both were also popular in Westmeath too) is a bit mad