three seater constituencies benefit FF disproportionately

Mailman

Three seat constituencies don't aid democracy.
All constituencies should be 4 or more seats and boundaries should be adjusted accordingly.

Practical example - Dublin West including D15 has one FF seat.
The seat is the equivalent of a rotten borrough.
The seat is held by Brian Lenihan who has his career thanks to nepotism.
Brian Lenihan is an absolute waste of space and has done practically nothing for the last ten years.
Why should he? He is guaranteed a seat regardless of how little or how much he does. FF couldn't be bothered doing anything for the constituents of Dublin West because they know there is no possibility of getting two out of three seats and regardless of how useless Brian Lenihan is he will never loose his seat because the FF vote will never collapse that much.

Most of the electorate in Dublin West are from D15.
What has D15 got?
Huge crime. Huge drug problems. Huge Deprivation.
Underfunded hospital. A green field that resembles a black hole called Abbotstown. A leaky pool with a sacked management company.
A M50/N3 interchange that makes the lives of tens of thousands of commuters/voters from D15 and beyond miserable on a daily basis.
An underfunded bus service and totally inadequate rail service.

What does the sitting FF TD do about any of these problems - SFA.
Why? Because his continued employment isn't dependent on getting results.

When FF know they will always get one out of three seats in a three seat constituency how is democracy served?

End of rant.

4 seats won't be all that much more proportional. You'd need about 10-12 seats per constituency to see a realisitc representation of voter preferenes. Then again that number of seats per constituency has other problems for a PR-STV system.

John_C

Mailman wrote:

What has D15 got? ... A leaky pool with a sacked management company.

I wish my area had that pool.

Mailman

John_C wrote:

I wish my area had that pool.

Well your area doesn't but I guess you would have hoped they would have spent your income tax on a pool sans leaks regardless of where it was sited.

The_Minister

The pool wasn't that bad. Try and artificially contain so many cubic tonnes of water and you'll always have some leaks. And the company paid for the damage to the roof, so chill.

murphaph

Gotta agree with the OP's sentiments wrt Lenihan. He is a complete waste of space to us. I voted for him last time but I cannot in good conscience vote for him ever again. We really have the sh!ttiest selection of candidates here in D15 don't we!

I'll be giving a preference to Varadkar this time round, if only because the guy has actually responded any time I've contacted him (more than can be said for Lenihan).

It pains me to vote Labour (union pandering etc.) but Joan Burton has also been very responsive and proactive in my pet area, transport.

I have no time for Higgins. I think he only cares about the corpo estates in D15 and not much else. Not good enough Joe.

What a miserable selection all round. We all know it's gonna be Lenihan, Burton, Higgins again in all likelihood though

The sad thing is that Lenihan is a smart guy, who could make a good Taoiseach, but ignoring constituents doesn't do anything for me Brian, so no more votes for you.

The_Minister

This is only rumours, but I've heard that Bertie doesn't like Lenihan and that's why he never progressed further ministry wise.