The Electoral (Amendment) Act 1947 (No. 31) was a law in
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
which revised
Dáil constituencies
There are 39 multi-member electoral districts, known as Dáil constituencies, that elect 160 TDs (members of parliament), to Dáil Éireann, Ireland's lower house of the Oireachtas, or parliament, by means of the single transferable vote, ...
. The new constituencies were first used for the
13th Dáil
In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octave ...
, elected at the
1948 general election on 4 February 1948.
This Act repealed the
Electoral (Revision of Constituencies) Act 1935
The Electoral (Revision of Constituencies) Act 1935 (No. 5) was a law in Ireland which replaced the Dáil constituencies which had been defined in the Electoral Act 1923.
Unlike the constituencies in the 1923 Act, it included many instances of ...
, which defined the constituencies since the
1937 general election. It also increased the number of seats in the Dáil by 9 from 138 to 147. It was used at the
1951
Events
January
* January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950).
* January 9 – The Government of the United ...
,
1954
Events
January
* January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany.
* January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting.
* January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The fir ...
and
1957 general elections.
The 1947 revision was repealed by the
Electoral (Amendment) Act 1961
The Electoral (Amendment) Act 1961 (No. 19) was a law in Ireland which revised Dáil constituencies. The new constituencies were first used at the 1961 general election to the 17th Dáil held on 4 October 1961.
This Act replaced the Electoral ...
, which created a new schedule of constituencies first used at the
1961 general election for the
17th Dáil
17 (seventeen) is the natural number following 16 and preceding 18. It is a prime number.
Seventeen is the sum of the first four prime numbers.
In mathematics
17 is the seventh prime number, which makes seventeen the fourth super-prime, as s ...
.
Background
In 1947 the rapid rise of new party
Clann na Poblachta
Clann na Poblachta (; "Family/Children of the Republic") was an Irish republican political party founded in 1946 by Seán MacBride, a former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army.
Foundation
Clann na Poblachta was officially launched on ...
threatened the position of the governing party
Fianna Fáil
Fianna Fáil (, ; meaning 'Soldiers of Destiny' or 'Warriors of Fál'), officially Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party ( ga, audio=ga-Fianna Fáil.ogg, Fianna Fáil – An Páirtà Poblachtánach), is a conservative and Christian- ...
. The government of
Éamon de Valera
Éamon de Valera (, ; first registered as George de Valero; changed some time before 1901 to Edward de Valera; 14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was a prominent Irish statesman and political leader. He served several terms as head of governm ...
introduced the Act, which increased the size of the Dáil from 138 to 147 and increased the number of three-seat constituencies from fifteen to twenty-two. The result was described by the journalist and historian
Tim Pat Coogan as "a blatant attempt at gerrymander which no
Six County Unionist could have bettered".
The following February, at the
1948 general election, Clann na Poblachta secured ten seats instead of the nineteen they would have received proportional to their national vote.
No Dáil constituency has had more than five seats since 1948. The
Constitutional Convention's 2013 recommendation to increase proportionality by having larger constituencies was rejected by the
Fine Gael–Labour government on the grounds that "the three, four or five seat Dáil constituency arrangement has served the State well since 1948".
Constituencies 1948–1961
;Key to columns
* Constituency: The name of the constituency. Compass points follow the area name in this list, which was not always the case in the official version of the name.
* Created: The year of the election when a constituency of the same name was first defined.
* Seats: The number of TDs elected from the constituency under the Act.
* Change: Change in the number of seats since the last distribution of seats (which took effect in 1937).
Summary of changes
This list summarises the changes in representation. It does not address revisions to the boundaries of constituencies.
See also
*
Elections in the Republic of Ireland
In Ireland, direct elections by universal suffrage are used for the President, the ceremonial head of state; for Dáil Éireann, the house of representatives of the Oireachtas or parliament; for the European Parliament; and for local governmen ...
References
{{Constituency Law Ireland
Electoral 1947
1947 in Irish law
Acts of the Oireachtas of the 1940s