James Lawless – View from the Tracks

So the boundary commission have completed their report and issued the findings three days early.. The site practically crashed on Tuesday afternoon once word got out the report was up there, as desperate online politicos (including me admittedly:) stabbed the refresh button on their browsers.

After an hour of wailing and gnashing of teeth the site eventually settled down and the 20MB file unravelled on my machine. Straight to the Kildare pages of course and reasonably satisfied with the outcome. The report broadly follows the outline suggested in submissions made by myself (here) and Tony O’Donnell down south of the county.

The headline changes are that Celbridge and Leixlip are combined into a single 6-seater, Athy gains the spare seat and assimilates some population from Kilcullen and Ballymore, and Naas remains pretty level but loses the aforementioned southern towns which allows it hold onto 5 seats but with a reduced population, addressing the anomaly which previously had it the least well represented area in the county in terms of population ratios. This is also consistent with the stated term of reference to align more closely with Dáil boundaries. We also absorbed some compensatory population into Naas, namely the townland of Oughterard, a rural area north of Kill, whom will all be our new friends now.  The only other item on my wishlist which wasn’t actioned was a transfer of Bodenstown electoral district into Naas electoral area en masse. Currently it’s split with part in Clane and I felt for continuity of representation, since these people worship, shop, socialise in Sallins and Naas, it would have made sense for them to also vote and be represented within the same area. Still it’s a small point and overall the review makes good sense.

Full report is available here but be warned it’s a big download.