Constitutional Referendum on the Number of Members of Dáil Éireann: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-25 ============================================================ Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland I thank the Minister of State and his officials for coming here this evening. It was an interesting debate. For instance, Senator Sharon Keogan mentioned the disparity in turnout and the numbers of votes needed to elect a TD. I was researching this and discovered the quota in Dublin Central was 6,561 and on the last census night 35% of the people of Dublin city - and this would be far more accentuated in city centre areas - were not born in Ireland. Maybe some of them were citizens but this reflects the difference between citizens and population, when 35% of the population on the last census night in Dublin were non-nationals at birth. The second thing I want to say is that the formula of 20,000 to 30,000 was a very flexible formula, but let us remember that in 1938 there were 138 TDs and the population of Ireland was 2.96 million. That meant the population per TD was 21,000, so we were scraping along the bottom of the range then. We are now hammering out the ceiling all the time. Things have changed dramatically and it is not as if it is a wonderful formula. There has been a constant rise towards this imperative now that we have to keep increasing the numbers in the Dáil. Another point I wish to make, seeing as I have Senator Mullen here with me, is about the Minister of State's Department and how it gave a hospital pass to NUI for the reformed universities six-seat constituency. The result of all of that has been the following. Far from increasing the number of graduates who are going to vote in the next election, if there was an election held tomorrow the electoral register would have declined from 160,000 to roughly 70,000. That is the achievement of giving it to NUI and the mess of rushing through the legislation because the Supreme Court cracked the whip. Let us remember that it has been a disastrous failure and somebody should do something about it. An Coimisiún Toghcháin should have taken responsibility for that and not asked NUI to preside over a collapse in the number of eligible graduates. I do not know how many graduates are entitled to vote for the six university seats but in theory I imagine it is about 800,000 because the number of people who have degrees now has increased massively compared with what it was when the State was founded. I completely agree with the Minister of State that we need to do something about local government. If we looked at what is happening now and we applied Éamon de Valera's 21,000 per TD, the Dáil would already have 278 Members. If we take account of what Sinn Féin has said, the Dáil would have 240 TDs at the 30,000 limit. If we went down to the 20,000 limit, it would be at 300 TDs or something like that. This is not an artificial issue. I and my colleagues did not say we want to save money. We are not talking about saving money. We are talking about having a viable Dáil. One of the problems with British democracy is that there is a small cabinet which does not work any more as a cabinet, and 500 people in Westminster who are effectively backbenchers. One of the problems with English democracy has been that complete imbalance between the Executive and the Membership of Parliament. We are going towards that because we have limited the number of Ministers we can have but there is no limit on the amount of TDs. I welcome the Government's non-opposition to the motion, which was not offered as a gimmick. We did not say we would save X or Y million or that we should have fewer politicians because that is a good idea. What we are really concerned about is the health of Irish democracy, which will be affected if we do not mend our ways, so to speak. I ask the Department in particular to reflect on the point Senator Keogan made - I did not expect her to make it but I think it is a startling point - that if you look at the difference between rural Ireland and urban Ireland, it requires a hell of a lot more votes to get a seat in the Dáil in parts of rural Ireland than it does in urban Ireland. The quota in Dublin Central, as I said, is 6,561. That reflects the fact that in urban Ireland there is a transient population. People are moving from flat to flat and all the rest of it and the register is in poor condition to start with, but it also reflects the fact that the difference between the citizen population entitled to vote and the non-national immigrant and transient population is so high in some areas. There is food for thought for everybody. I really do welcome the Minister's positive approach towards addressing the issues that have arisen tonight. Obviously, our debate has been very short but there is a lot of consideration to be undertaken by An Coimisiún Toghcháin and the Government because this is not going to go away. --- 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