Naas Town Council met last week to consider the proposal of expanding to 12 members from the current 9.

The glut of submissions received on this August issue included me and er, one other. Labour party, Naas Branch made a submission along the lines of population increase while my submission argued the precedent by highlighting the huge disparity in representation ratios across different town councils (full doc here).

To recap, this imbalance is best illustrated by the fact that Ballbay in Co. Monaghan, with 401 residents has the same number of councillors to look after it, as Naas does for 20,000 residents…

Naas Town Hall

Next step is for Councillors to go behind closed doors for a more detailed consideration. Initial discussion suggested that sub-dividing the town could be a stumbling block with concerns over the creation of wards within the town.

I shared this concern, which is why my own submission argued for the retention of a single constituency. Whilst multiple smaller wards would be easier from an electoral point of view, and probably better suited to the big parties (so selfishly I should be in favour) I would fear an extreme form of parish pump politics were the town to end up multi-constituency. Really issues should be considered on a town basis, not merely the impact upon a particular ward – and given the town size, each ward would be not much bigger than a collection of estates.

Of the towns that have created extra council seats, only one has actually sub-divided, and it (Drogehda) has a population of 37,000 almost double the size of Naas.

Anyway the protocol committee should make a decision soon.