Constituency Commission Report and the Left TDs……… initial thoughts June 21, 2012
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.trackback
There’s an awful lot to read in The latest report from the Constituency Commission. Available here
These are my first thoughts on how it may impact the prospect of Left TDs.
Richard Boyd Barrett – Could have been far worse but Dun Laoghaire remains a 4 seater .
Seamus Healy – Tipperary is now a five seater with some of his Clonmel hinterland moved to Waterford. Sinn Fein have a decent presence in North Tipp so will be a challenge.
Joan Collins – Some of Dublin South Central moved to the new Dublin Bay South. She may have lost a bit of her support as part of Kimmage was moved.
Joe Higgins- No Real change so should be happy enough.
Clare Daly – Good for her with a new 5 seat Dublin Fingal constituency which contains all of Swords. Comes out well from it.
John Halligan – Not much change in Waterford so shouldn’t make much of a difference to him.
Thomas Pringle – The 5 seat Donegal is bad news for him. Based in the South of the County, the Southern part of his Donegal Twon hinterland has gone to Sligo-Leitrim. Tough ask to keep his seat.
Catherine Murphy – A Rural enough area of Kildare North has gone to Kildare South, with her Leixlip/ Maynooth heartland remaining untouched and Kildare North remains a four seater. So will be happy enough.
Maureen O’Sullivan- Dublin Central reduced to a 3 seater , Areas of Drumcondra , Glasnevin and Ashtown gone but will have a tough fight to keep her seat.
Finian McGrath – Dublin North Central is now gone and he will probably stand in the Dublin Bay North five seater. Should be OK.
…as for me I’ve moved Constituency and can now vote for Brian Hayes 
Collins loses 414 votes from the loss of those areas, most of it from Terenure. Though she does poll well in lots of the Kimmage districts, not the one being moved where she was near the bottom last time out.
On these boundaries it would have been a fight between her and Sinn Féin for the last seat in 2011.
Most of the WBS initial comments look sound, but I suspect Pringle will balance loss of South Donegal votes with the statistical fact that winning one seat from five is easier than one from three.
Overall a rough calculation suggests the following changes because there will be 8 less seats :
FF minus 1 plus 2
FG minus 4 plus 1
LP minus 4
Ind minus 2
More Later!
Just for the record IELB wrote the post above. I’d love to think you’re right about Pringle, but it’ll be tough.
As an aside any hope Green Party leader Eamon Ryan had of regaining his seat are gone which is a huge blow for them.
or a blessing depending on your outlook
Sargent will fancy his chances if he goes again mind you.
How so? I think Trev would rather further his career as a celebrity gardener than try to get back into the bearpit of politics. Particularly in the context of the second bailout and the fiscal treaty coming into effect from 2014/5. There’s more cash and less hassle flogging gardening books than trying to re-start a political career which included voting for the bank guarantee, NAMA and the bailout.
Lets hope so. I don’t think my gag reflex could stand his return to politics.
Mattie safe after all
Hopefully the electorate will move on from Fg,FF and Labour.
As regards Tipp, the SF base is around Nenagh. Big part of that around Shinrone, Holy Cross, gone in to Offally, so may not be great for SF in that regard. I dont think I can think of any TD of the 166 more adversely affected than Pringle. V unlucky.
I think that this is the first time the constituencies have been rejigged in recent times that didn’t absolutely screw over the Socialist Party. In fact, I don’t think it really screws over any of the ULA TDs.
Any chance of a seat in Dublin South West for Mick Murphy now that he’ll be living there and get a decent vote from Whitechurch .
Would the new Dublin Bay North be a possible target too?
A second seat in Dublin Fingal with Daly based around Swords and say Terry Kelleher in the Northern part?
Maybe Wallace could join her in Fingal Dublin?
Oh look, an anonymous trolling shitbag.
Yeah, if people have political points fair enough but just stirring it up like this is trolling pure and simple and will be dealt with as such.
The first priority for Mick, I presume, will be to win back a council seat. After that, well, a five seater with his home area added does sound reasonably promising, but some of the other areas added to the constituency from Dublin South wouldn’t necessarily be obvious Socialist Party territory.
There will clearly be a second candidate in Dublin Fingal, and I’d imagine that it would be Terry. Whether the numbers are there to put that second candidate in the running, I’m not sure.
I haven’t looked at Dublin Bay North at all, so other than saying that there will be a candidate, I don’t know.
Does anyone have a list up of all of the TDS who are imperilled by this report? It would be interesting to see if it includes any cabinet members.
From the video above, it appears Mattie McGrath is unhappy. This can only be a good thing.
Cabinet members that won’t be happy will include Alan Shatter,
Junior Ministers such as Joe Costello and Ciaran Cannon wont be thrilled either.
I doubt Endas too pleased at Mayo being reduced from 5 to 4 seats either.
Shatter will be very very unhappy.
What do you think of Shane Ross’s chance in the new Dublin Rathdown?
Well Ross is there to pick up the disgruntled Middle Class vote and the new Dublin Rathdown is possibly even more middle class than the old Dublin South was.
If he opposes the property tax, as I’m sure he will, he’ll sail home.
I’d hazard that He’ll be opposing it on a ‘squeezed middle’ ticket. By that don’t bail out unsecured bondholders, cut the public sector, welfare etc rather than squeeze the middle classes dry.
It will be a huge issue there (and elsewhere in Dublin) if it’s based on house value.
Will make it all the more interesting should either government party be facing oblivion next time out. I doubt the lessons of some Fianna Fáilers reluctance to move or stand aside have been learned and they only had to deal with the votes rather then seats disappearing.
The Constituency Commission doesn’t take the necessary space for egos into account.
Combine that with the pattern which shows a TD’s first defense of their seat is the time they’re most likely to lose it.. and we’re looking at a monster of an election next time out.
About half of Labour TDs and a third of Fine Gael TDs are such rookies.
There’s definitely that, and I think OR’s comment directly above yours is spot on too.
Bring on the next election – well, maybe not too soon.
I suspect that problem could be somewhat limited by the age profile of the Labour Party. There are an awful lot of grey types in their parliamentary party, who might prefer to run away with their pensions rather than take their hard earned humiliation. When you add that to the limited number of constituencies where they have two seats in the first place, I suspect that they probably won’t share that particular problem with Fianna Fail even if (when) they suffer a meltdown.
Fine Gael would be much more susceptible to it, but in the absence of the emergence of a “clean hands” right wing party, I tend to think that while they will have a very tough election, they are less likely to suffer a complete meltdown. If the Greek elections show anything, it’s that even in times of huge social crisis, there will still be a substantial right wing, wealthy, pro-austerity vote.
That sounds probable. It’s hard to see any kind of new right-wing party emerging. Aside from a few egotistical ‘leaders’ (Ganley, McDowell), who would be interested in joining such a party who isn’t already involved in Fine Gael? Unless FF disintegrates entirely.
I wonder about a point made earlier by CMK, referring to the difficulty the Green Party might have in regaining any support, given the baggage of their participation in the last government. Is it possible that the all but inevitable second bailout might work well for the Greens: that the majority of currently sitting deputies would be tarnished by association with ‘a’ bailout (regardless of the circumstances leading up to each) and that no one, other than SF, ULA and assorted independents, would have ‘clean hands’ in that regard.
I doubt it though. I find it hard to see the Greens clawing anything back next time.
The Greens are politically radioactive and the current outfit hasn’t a chance of resurrecting itself any time in the next 20 years. Every adult in the state knows what role the Greens played in the years 2008 to the end of 2010. The decisions the Greens helped to take and shape have proved to be, as was clear at the time but is more stark and obvious now, completely catastrophic on so many levels. So, while Eamo will probably pop up regularly on panels over the next few years I don’t think they’ll be enough takers to re-build the Greens.
The only solution is to disband the current outfit and restart from scratch and keep a billion miles away from every TD who served in the last government.
The area that Donegal lost would’ve titled to FG – I think Pringle still has a fair chance given that Killybegs along with most of the remainder of the Donegal LEA is still there. If SF decide to run Cora Harvey as a third candidate he’ll lose most of the transfers he got from Doherty’s pretty large surplus however.
Dublin Central is one of the oddest looking constituencies I’ve ever seen. Donohoe and MLM lost territory here but FF can kiss any chance they had of regaining a seat good bye. I’d wonder if Mary Fitzpatrick will stand in Dublin West.
Can see Eric Byrne retiring given the loss of Terenure in DSC. If Connaghan retires who could they run?
FF are guaranteed at least 3 seats in Dublin (Dublin West, Fingal and Bay North). In worse news Willie O’Dea will top the poll again, based on Limerick City’s new boundaries.
“Can see Eric Byrne retiring given the loss of Terenure in DSC. If Connaghan retires who could they run?”
I was told Conaghan will retire. There is the Upton nephew and a few councillors hungry to be deputies — Phoenix reported on some fund and games when Mary Upton announced her retirement about who would be on the ticket. When he was eliminated, Conagahn was supposed to transfer to Upton. ‘cept that’s not how the votes fell
Re a new right wing party, I was on the Libertas mailing list and as part of the thank you email after the Referendum was the following
Over the next few months, I will be speaking to as many of you who are interested about how the organisation can proceed from here. We want to begin the work of building a bottom-up, grassroots driven movement that can challenge the tired political establishment at every turn, and we’d like to hear from you about how that can be done.
* thunderclap *
[...] of support being moved. It didn’t really focus on what parties would benefit from it. I did a small piece on the Left TDs and now a bit on the rest. Looking at the Constituency Commission report the big winners are Fianna [...]