By Michael Gallagher

Lots of well-informed fine-grained analysis around of the constituency review published earlier this week by the Electoral Commission (EC). On the bigger picture, 4 points.

1. EC had no option but to respect the legislation, but regrettable that that specifies that all constituencies must be in range of 3–5 seats. Academic consensus is that average district magnitude of five seats needed to deliver proportional outcomes. 3-seaters should be consigned to the history books, not compatible with principles underpinning proportional representation. Hope that legislation before next round of redrawing constituencies specifies a range of 4–6 or 4–7 seaters.

2. Constant fluctuation of Dáil size very unusual in comparative context. Much better to have fixed size (Finnish parliament has had precisely 200 seats for over a century). Fixing Dáil size at 180 would be in line with comparative practice now and for next three or four decades. Trite reaction, that seems always to emerge when Dáil size is discussed, to effect that ‘UK has 60 million people and 650 MPs, hence Ireland should have only 55 TDs’ is based on false assumption (unfortunately shared by Irish constitution) that parliament size should increase in linear fashion as population increases. Cube root rule (parliament size cubed is approx equal to population size) is the place to start.

3. Constant redrawing of constituencies also very unusual in comparative context. Norm across Europe is that constituencies (usually based on one or more counties or equivalent unit) stay the same over time, and all that changes, in response to population changes, is number of seats that each has. Moving one section of a county into adjacent constituency, as happens at present in Ireland, bad for representation, bad for TDs, bad for residents. Thus, under more sensible scheme, Wicklow (for example) would constitute a single constituency in perpetuity, entitled to 5, 6, 7 seats as the case may be. If population grows so much that it’s entitled to 8 of the 180 seats, then that’s the time to split it into two 4-seaters. Not rocket science, it’s what happens right across Europe. John Coakley (UCD) has outlined the principle and suggested a specific scheme as it could be applied to Ireland. As with point 2, this would need one-off constitutional change.

4. And not least, credit to EC for being so open and transparent about its processes and being willing to engage with media and interested parties about how it reached its decisions and how it should proceed in future.