Electoral Reform Bill 2022: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2022-07-07
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Rebecca Moynihan (LAB), Administrative Panel

These amendments are concerned with ensuring that all constituencies will have four or more seats.
We know that in our PR-STV system smaller three-seat constituencies tend to benefit larger political parties. We need proper balance between the vote share each party gets and smaller parties being able to win seats. Three-seat constituencies generally benefit what have traditionally been the two big parties. We believe four-, five- and six-seat constituencies would be fairer than three-seat constituencies. Amendment No. 23 is concerned with the same issue. It proposes that constituencies should be larger where it is reasonably practical to do so.
We had a discussion on Second Stage on respecting county boundaries. Some Members on the Government side did not necessarily feel that respecting county boundaries is the way we should go about it as that would excessively limit a constituency commission. The amendment is primarily concerned with ensuring that constituencies are bigger to allow smaller parties, independent candidates and diverse voices to come through, rather than having three-seat constituencies, which tend to be dominated by the bigger parties with more money.

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Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-07-07