The number of TDs should increase from 160 to 174, it has been recommended in a much-anticipated review of Ireland’s constituency boundaries.
The largest increase in TDs since 1980 would be achieved by the Electoral Commission also recommending that the number of constituencies be increased from 39 to 43.
The constituency review was prompted by a boom in the population to 5.15 million, as shown in Census 2022 – an increase of 8% in four years.
As the Irish constitution says there needs to be one TD to represent every 20,000 to 30,000 people in Ireland, the constituency boundaries need to shift.
Of Ireland’s current 39 constituencies – nine three-seaters, 17 four-seaters and 13 five-seaters – all but one have seen population increases which put them at more than 30,000 people per TD, with Limerick County being the exception.
According to Irish electoral laws, each constituency should have between three and five elected members, with three-seaters seen as advantageous to large political parties and five-seaters an easier job for smaller parties and independents to get over the quota threshold.
Constituency reviews are meant to avoid breaching county boundaries where possible, to follow geographical features and to maintain the continuity of electoral areas as much as they can.
Upon the establishment of the Electoral Commission in February this year, it asked for submissions on how the boundaries should be redrawn, and received 556 submissions from elected representatives, political parties and academics.
Recommendations published on Wednesday include that there should be 13 three-seat constituencies (plus 4), 15 four-seat areas (minus 2), and 15 five-seat constituencies (plus 2).
This would mean that, on average, 29,593 people would be represented by each of the 174 TDs.
Seven constituencies remain entirely unchanged since the last review: Clare, Cork South-West, Donegal, Dublin Central, Kerry, Limerick County and Waterford.
Seven of the 10 existing “county boundary breaches” have been removed across Laois, Mayo, Meath, Offaly, Roscommon, Tipperary and Westmeath.
There are four extra seats in the Dublin area, with several changes to electoral divisions.
The five-seat Dublin Fingal constituency has gained a TD after being split into Dublin Fingal East and Dublin Fingal West, with three seats each.
Dublin Rathdown, Dublin West, and Dublin Mid-West have all been allocated an additional TD, while Cork North Central and Cork South Central also pick up an extra seat each.
There will be a new TD for Tipperary as that five-seat constituency will be divided into two new three-seat constituencies of Tipperary North and Tipperary South.
Similarly, the existing five-seat Laois-Offaly constituency has been split into a three-seat Laois constituency and a three-seat Offaly constituency.
Elsewhere, the constituencies of Wicklow and Wexford lose a seat each, down from five to four, in a major change which sees territory from each area being transferred to create the new three-seat constituency of Wicklow-Wexford – representing an overall increase of one TD.
The five remaining new seats have been added to to Kildare North, Longford-Westmeath, Galway East, Meath East and Mayo.
The commission could have recommended up to 181 TDs but said it chose 174 because it was “neither possible, nor appropriate, to attempt to predict where, and to what extent, the population will grow in the future”.
The chairwoman of An Coimisiun Toghchain, the Electoral Commission, said the “significant changes” are the product of “detailed analysis of constitutional and statutory limits”.
Supreme Court Judge Ms Justice Marie Baker said: “It arrives at a solution which best fits the needs of the country as a whole, as our population expands.”
None of it was easy because obviously once you create one constituency it will have a domino effect on the ones around it— Ms Justice Marie Baker, Electoral Commission
The commission allowed for a variance in average constituency “population per TD” of plus or minus 8%.
Some of the greatest variances are a plus 8.08% in Clare, plus 7.93% in Carlow-Kilkenny, plus 7.41% in Dublin South-West, minus 8.13% in Kildare South and minus 6.75% in Mayo.
This means each TD in Clare represents 31,985 people while each TD in Kildare South covers 27,186 people.
Ms Justice Baker acknowledged that there were constituencies that gave the commission “nightmares and terrors” due to the domino effect of changes affecting surrounding areas.
She said: “There were some constituencies where the answer was clear enough when you looked at the boundaries but none of it was easy because obviously once you create one constituency it will have a domino effect on the ones around it.”
Commission chief executive Art O’Leary said the drawing up of new constituency boundaries was “a battle between maths and geography”.
Elsewhere, the commission recommended that existing European Parliament constituencies remain because the EU institutional process has yet to make formal recommendations on the number of seats allocated to Ireland, which is likely to increase by at least one to 14.
Ireland is due to hold local council elections and a European Parliament election next summer.
A general election is heavily rumoured to be planned for November next year, after the final Budget of the three-party coalition government is officially confirmed.
