Bill Ryan, Chairman of the North Westmeath Historical Society (NWHS), made the trip to Dáil Éireann in Dublin on Tuesday of this week, 10 January, to deliver a petition calling on part of north Westmeath to be restored back into the Longford/Westmeath electorial constituency.
Over the past few weeks, Bill has been giving very informative talks throughout parts of north Westmeath entitled ‘TDs from the Longford-Westmeath Constituency, 1923-2016’. At the end of these talks, Bill mentioned the petition he had in circulation regarding restoring north Westmeath to the Longford-Westmeath Constituency and this petition received a very favourable response.
The petition was left in several shops throughout north Westmeath, in shops and premises in Castlepollard, Coole, Collinstown, Delvin, Clonmellon and Raharney, to mention just a few areas, and many people put their names to the petition to show they supported a return to the Longford Westmeath constituency.
Speaking about the petition, Bill said, “Part of north Westmeath has been out of the Longford/Westmeath constituency now since 2007; that is ten years now. The people of North Westmeath have generally no interest in General Elections now because the candidates all come from the Meath West area and they have very little connection with this area. We don’t see them that often; they are not available to us on a regular basis. Mullingar is our natural main town and it is there that we go, rather than Navan or Trim.
There is a population of 8,000 people in these electoral districts and they are disenfranchised in a way, really. It means that we can never really hope for a candidate from this area to get to the Dáil, because the electorate is not there for them and that is wrong. We had Joe Kennedy here, and Donie Cassidy and Joe Fagan in years past, local TDs and it would be no harm if we had another one.
It is a totally impartial constituency commission that decides this, and there is no political interference in it, but nevertheless the boundaries have to be respected and in this case they are not. We in Westmeath are separate from Meath West, and we are not happy being part of their constituency, no disrespect to Meath people.
For ten years, 1992 to 2002, we had the Westmeath constituency and that was fantastic, so they could either return us to Westmeath or return us to Longford/Westmeath, but it is not right as it stands,” said Bill.
The commission accepted public submissions on this matter up until Tuesday of this week, 10 January and then they will make their final submission in March.
