Constitutional Referendum on the Number of Members of Dáil Éireann: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-25
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Joe Flaherty (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach

The Minister of State is welcome back to the Chamber. I welcome the motion. I might not agree with many of its tenets but I agree that it certainly merits a discussion. We have to acknowledge that we are still a relatively young country. We are just 100 years old, plus a couple of years. While it is hard to get everything right, when it comes to democracy and exponents of democracies, we are probably a benchmark for the rest of the world. We do democracy very well. We are a democratic country and have an open Parliament. Even today, Members can reflect on the number of school groups, people and visitors who were able to rock up to the gates of Leinster House, get a tour and meet their public representatives. We remain accessible. That is something we should always guard and look out for.
I can see where the motion is coming from in the context of the change in demographics in the country. We now have intrinsically Irish and what we call "new Irish". This has swelled our population. We are probably heading towards a population of 6 million on the entire island of Ireland. If we go back to 200 years ago, we had a similar population until the Great Famine wiped out large numbers of people and forced many into emigration, largely to America and the UK. While hindsight is often a great thing, although it can be a menace sometimes, if the Great Famine had not happened, what position would we be in now? Would we be heading for a population of 12 million? Where would we be?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-25