For the Electoral Commission, which has the unenviable job of redrawing Dáil constituencies, it will boil down to a wrestling match between geography and maths.

Sometimes there is no escaping the maths. Only so many seats will fit within a county boundary no matter how many permutations you try. And when it does not work out, it can get ugly.

Article 16 of the Constitution specifies there must be one TD for between 20,000 and 30,000 people. But here’s the catch. That’s everybody, not just those over 18 who are eligible to vote. It covers every resident of the country recorded in the latest census, including children and people of other nationalities.

It was fine for most of the history of the State when the population was low and the number of people per TD hovered around the 20,000 mark. But in recent decades the population of the State has risen sharply and when boundaries are redrawn, it is always close to the 30,000 limit.

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That gives rise to two problems. The first is there is no wriggle room. A cardinal rule for the Electoral Commission is to respect the county boundaries as much as possible. But if a county has a population of 100,000,........

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