Constituency Commission

The Constituency Commission (Irish: An Coimisiún um Thoghlaigh) is an independent commission in Ireland, which advises on redrawing of constituency boundaries for election of members to Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Oireachtas, the national parliament) and the European Parliament. Each commission comes into being after the census, submits a non-binding report to the Oireachtas, and is dissolved. A separate but similar Local Electoral Area Boundary Committee fulfils the same function for Local Electoral Area boundaries.

Constituency revision is effected by an act of the Oireachtas (parliament) which enumerates the areas included within each constituency. Historically the act was drafted by the government of the day to favour its own party or parties, leading to allegations of gerrymandering by the opposition. The Electoral (Amendment) Act 1959 was struck out in 1961 by the Supreme Court as being repugnant to the Constitution of Ireland because of excessive malapportionment. The hastily enacted replacement, the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1961, relied instead on manipulating district size; the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1974 attempted to do the same, but backfired when a larger-than-anticipated swing resulted in a landslide for the opposition in the 1977 general election. The incoming Taoiseach Jack Lynch promised that future boundary revisions take account of recommendations from an independent commission. Such commissions operated on an ad-hoc basis, beginning with the 1977 European constituency commission whose report was used for the 1979 election. The first Dáil commission's report informed the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1980. The adhoc system was superseded when the Electoral Act, 1997 placed the Constituency Commission on a statutory footing with fixed terms of reference. The Electoral Commission envisaged by the current Irish government may subsume both the Constituency Commission and the Local Electoral Area Boundary Commission.

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