Constitutional Referendum on the Number of Members of Dáil Éireann: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-25
============================================================

Sharon Keogan (IND), Industrial and Commercial Panel

The Minister of State is welcome. I support this motion calling on the Government to initiate a constitutional amendment to specify the number of Members of Dáil Éireann. As colleagues will be aware, Article 16.2.2° of the Constitution requires there to be no fewer than one TD per 30,000 people and no more than one TD per 20,000. That provision served a very different Ireland, one that was smaller, more homogenous and had vastly fewer State responsibilities than today. As has been outlined, the State's population is now 5.458 million and it is projected to exceed 5.56 million within just two years. The Electoral Commission is already working at the edge of the constitutional ratio. By 2027, the Dáil may have 181 to 185 TDs and if different trends continue, my colleagues have rightly calculated that by 2050 the number could approach 250 TDs. This is simply unsustainable.
The central argument of this motion is not only cost, though cost matters. As the media note reminded us, we all saw the €300,000 bicycle shed and none of wish to contemplate the hundreds of millions it would cost to expand the Leinster House complex every decade. The deeper argument is democratic sustainability. The Electoral Commission fulfilled its mandate by ensuring there was a TD for approximately every 30,000 residents, but that is residents, not voters. If we shift our analysis to voters per TD, which is a far more accurate measure of democratic proportionality, we uncover a stark imbalance. In the last election, Dublin West and Dublin Central returned a TD for roughly every 15,000 voters, while Limerick county required 25,000 voters per TD and Donegal more than 26,000. That means a vote in some parts of Dublin is almost 40% stronger than a vote in Donegal. That is not a minor discrepancy; it is a fundamental distortion of the principle of one person, one vote.
It is true that differences in voter registration rates contribute to this, but even accounting for that the disparity remains too large to ignore. As matters stand, two voters in Dublin carry the same electoral weight as three in Donegal. No healthy democracy can look at that reality and shrug its shoulders. We face a choice. We either continue to expand the Dáil indefinitely or address the underlying imbalance. The fairest way forward is to tie representation more closely to the number of eligible voters, neither simply the number of residents nor eligible voters. Representation in a democracy ultimately falls from the franchise and the strength of a vote and the number of TDs to represent them should be based on those who actually possess it.
I say this while remaining open to other models colleagues may propose, such as, for example, automatic registration for voters or even mandatory voting. Yet, that alone is not enough. The deeper truth is that we have outgrown the constitutional architecture designed almost a century ago. Our population is larger, more diverse and has more complex needs than ever before. The State does exponentially more than it did when these ratios were written into the Constitution. All of us here know from our experience of constituency offices that TDs and Senators are being asked to perform functions that in any modern system would be competently handled at local government level. Ireland remains one of the most centralised democracies in Europe.
If the number of TDs is capped, that cannot be the end of the conversation. It must be the beginning of a broader rebalancing of power between national and local levels. We need stronger local authorities with real decision-making powers, that are properly funded and democratically accountable so that not every problem has to travel the chain up to a TD's office. Capping TD numbers would force us to confront that reality. It would compel us to modernise a system that is now creaking under the weight of its own expectations.
This motion does not force the Government to choose a specific number. It simply calls for a referendum empowering the Oireachtas to set that number, whether it is 174, 180 or whatever the House deems appropriate after debate, but it does insist that we cannot continue to expand representation indefinitely while the real business of governance at local level remains structurally unchanged. For reasons of fairness, sustainability and democratic integrity, the time has come to act. I commend the motion to the House and thank my colleagues for supporting it.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

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