Pringle: Electoral Commission ‘too conservative’ in changes to constituency boundaries

By Thomas Pringle
Updated: 21st November 2023

Independent TD for Donegal, Thomas Pringle, said he believed there was a clear need for the whole of Donegal to return to a county-wide constituency or constituencies, saying the issue will likely have to be revisited after the next election.

Addressing the Dáil on Tuesday evening, Deputy Pringle said: “There is a clear need for the county to revert back to one unit, as in the whole county of Donegal,” adding that, “at the least it should have gone to back to Donegal South West and Donegal North East as it had done previously, and that would ensure that Donegal would be reunited as a whole.”

The deputy said he believed, on balance, that the Electoral Commission had taken too conservative a position on changes to constituency boundaries.

Deputy Pringle was speaking on Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2023, which sets in legislation the make-up of the next Dáil at 177 members, recognising the constitutional imperative of one TD for every 20,000 to 30,000 citizens.

Deputy Pringle said: “But I think really and truly what the constituency review has done at this stage is basically kicked to touch. Because they’re going to have to revisit this, probably after the next election again, and then at that time Donegal is going to have to change and Sligo/Leitrim is going to have to change.”

The deputy said: “I think the idea that the county boundaries should be maintained is vitally important and should permeate all of our thinking in relation to this.” He said he believed that can be achieved, adding, “In order to do that I think we have to revisit the constitutional imperative of one TD for 20,000 to 30,000 people and I think that’s what we should be looking at overall to ensure it will be done.”

The deputy said the numbers of TDs cannot be looked at in isolation and must be considered in terms of local government reform. He rejected suggestions that there were too many TDs.

Deputy Pringle said: “I think if you look at similar-sized countries across Europe they have a very similar type representation to us and we should be looking at those. If you look at England and how their representation looks, yes definitely we have more TDs than they have MPs, but I don’t think we should be looking there across the water at any time to see how we should be going.”

He said: “We need more representation across the board.”

The deputy said: “We need to look at local government and how it’s run and look at how the local government system can address more powers and have more say. Then maybe we could look at reducing the number of TDs, if local government actually did local work and local government controlled budgets.”

He said the county manager system also had to be revisited.

The deputy said the system was established in 1940 to take politics out of the local government system, “and it has worked to a certain extent, because it takes politics completely out of it – you have politicians pretending they’re in control when they have no control at all over how the local government system works.

“It’s the county manager and his staff that run the show and call the shots, and I think that needs to be addressed as well in whatever system that we put in place. Because it’s only by taking more control back to local authorities that we can actually reduce the need for national politicians,” he said.