The Constituency Commission () is an independent commission in Ireland which had advised on redrawing of constituency boundaries of

Dáil constituencies There are 43 multi-member electoral districts, known as Dáil constituencies, to elect 174 Teachta Dála, TDs to Dáil Éireann, the house of representatives of the Oireachtas, Republic of Ireland, Ireland's parliament, on the system of propor ...

for the election of members to Dáil Éireann (the house of representatives of the

Oireachtas The Oireachtas ( ; ), sometimes referred to as Oireachtas Éireann, is the Bicameralism, bicameral parliament of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The Oireachtas consists of the president of Ireland and the two houses of the Oireachtas (): a house ...

) and European Parliament constituencies prior to the establishment of the

Electoral Commission An election commission is a body charged with overseeing the implementation of electioneering process of any country. The formal names of election commissions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and may be styled an electoral commission, a c ...

in 2023. Each commission was established by the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government after the census. The Commission then submitted a non-binding report to the Oireachtas, and was dissolved. A separate but similar Local Electoral Area Boundary Committee fulfilled the same function for

local electoral area A local electoral area (LEA; ) is an electoral area for elections to Local government in the Republic of Ireland, local authorities in Ireland. All elections in the Republic of Ireland, elections use the single transferable vote. Republic of Ir ...

boundaries of

local government areas A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a state, province, division, or territory. The ph ...

History

Constituency revision is effected by an act of the

(parliament) which enumerates the areas included within each constituency. Historically the act was drafted by the government of the day to favour its own party or parties, leading to allegations of gerrymandering by the opposition. The Electoral (Amendment) Act 1959 was struck out in 1961 by the High Court as being repugnant to the

Constitution of Ireland The Constitution of Ireland (, ) is the constitution, fundamental law of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It asserts the national sovereignty of the Irish people. It guarantees certain fundamental rights, along with a popularly elected non-executi ...

because of excessive malapportionment. The hastily enacted replacement, the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1961, relied instead on manipulating district size; the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1974 attempted to do the same, but backfired when a larger-than-anticipated swing resulted in a landslide for the opposition in the 1977 general election. The incoming Taoiseach Jack Lynch promised that future boundary revisions take account of recommendations from an independent commission. Such commissions operated on an ad-hoc basis, beginning with the 1977 European constituency commission whose report was used for the 1979 election. The first Dáil commission's report informed the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1980. The system was superseded when the Electoral Act 1997 placed the Constituency Commission on a statutory footing with fixed terms of reference. These provisions of the 1997 Act were repealed by the Electoral Reform Act 2022. In 2023, the government established the

as a permanent statutory body under the Electoral Reform Act 2022. This assumed functions previously carried out by the Constituency Commission and Local Electoral Area Boundary Committees, as well as handling other functions relating to elections and referendums in the state.

Composition

The 1997 Act, as amended, provided that the chairman of the commission will be a

judge A judge is a person who wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...

of the superior courts. The other members of the commission are the

Clerk A clerk is a white-collar worker who conducts record keeping as well as general office tasks, or a worker who performs similar sales-related tasks in a retail environment. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include Records managem ...

of the Dáil, the Clerk of the Seanad, the Ombudsman, and the Secretary General of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The offices of the commission were in The Custom House, Dublin. The members of the most recent commission, in 2016, were:

Terms of reference

In relation to Dáil constituencies, the commission was required, in observing the relevant provisions of the

, to have regard to: *the total number of

members Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...

of the Dáil, subject to Article 16.2.2° of the Constitution, shall be not less than 166 and not more than 172; *each constituency shall return three, four or five members; *the breaching of

county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

boundaries shall be avoided as far as practicable; *each constituency shall be composed of contiguous areas; *there shall be regard to geographic considerations including significant physical features and the extent of and the density of population in each constituency; *the Commission shall endeavour to maintain continuity in relation to the arrangement of constituencies. The Commission invited written submissions in relation to both Dáil and European Parliament constituencies from the general public and from each member of the Dáil and Seanad, and the members of the European Parliament from Ireland, registered political parties and Returning officers/County registrars. The commission presented its report to the Chairman of the Dáil ( Ceann Comhairle). The final determination of the constituencies for Dáil Éireann and the European Parliament is a matter for the

to prescribe in legislation, as the commission's role was advisory.

Footnotes

References

External links

Official website

Report on Dáil and European Parliament Constituencies 2017Report on Dáil and European Parliament Constituencies 2007
{{Constituency Law Ireland 1992 establishments in Ireland Boundary commissions