TDs native to constituency

[beebub]

Here's a fairly obvious case of a TD not being from their constituency : Mary Hanafin (born in Thurles) and is TD for Dún Laoghaire.

Well, I know enough about my constituency to tell you that Mary Hanafin lost her seat in the last election. Hurray!!

[gerhard dengler]

Well, I know enough about my constituency to tell you that Mary Hanafin lost her seat in the last election. Hurray!!

she did, didn't she.

I'll withdraw gracefully from this thread

[Schuhart]

Thanks for the replies - every little helps!

I think it is an interesting debate (even if it makes me wonder as the time you have on your hands!).

In fairness, it doesn't take as long as it looks. I started by just cutting and pasting the wikipedia page showing the 31st Dail members. It has lots of links to the TDs names and constituencies. I took them in batches of ten, and did a few minutes here and there - their wikipedia entries frequently link back to their pages on the party websites, if there's nothing to indicate place of birth. Before you know it, you've the list above.

Now, I'd say there is a couple of hours work put into it. But I'm genuinely interested in knowing the answer, and seeing how its different to last time out.

However, I'm not sure if I could tell you what part of my constituency (Dun Laghaoire) each of the candidates in the general election were from or what part of the constituency my elected TDs are from. I suspect that I'm not alone in this. I also suspect that you'll find far less people from constituencies outside Dublin who are in the same boat.

I suspect you are right, and I can recall studies in Irish political geography that relate strength of a candidates vote to their home that showed a fair correlation.

Also, just anecdotally, a couple of times I've had people refer to a particular TD and say "he doesn't run in this part of the county", in situations when that TD actually is in their constituency. But there's a very clear picture in some people's minds that 'he's a Westport candidate' or 'he's a Mullingar candidate', or whatever. Now, these are only general trends - for instance, I've a feeling Westmeath had several Mullingar based TDs at some point?

[Barnsleyfc]

Connaughton,Keaveney,Kitt are all 100% definite natives of GE,not 100% about Ciaran Cannon but I think he is also,I know he lives in Galway East though.

[Morte]

Ciara Conway certainly grew up in Waterford. I can't say for definite she was born there if you're getting pernickity.

On general points. Cork, Donegal, Roscommon and Waterford come out as the most ‘homogenous’, if that’s the right word. What I mean is these counties have no non-native TDs, nor is anyone from those counties a TD in any other county.

Clare, Kerry, Longford, Westmeath, Mayo, Sligo and Wexford, have no non-native TDs, but people from those counties have won seats in other parts of the country.

The most ‘cosmopolitan’ constituency is Kildare North, where no TDs are native to county.

As might be guess, the largest concentration of non-native TDs is Dublin; there are 16 non-native TDs out of 47 seats, leaving 31 native Dublin TDs. The traffic is not all one-way, though. Three Dublin natives represent non-Dublin constituencies. Overall, while Dublin has 28% of seats, only 20% of TDs are Dublin natives (and clearly less than 20% are Dublin natives in Dublin constituencies.)

I'm not sure whether this is a good indicator of parochialism. The main thing that strikes me is that the homogenous counties are the ones on the periphery and would generally be regarded as doing poorly economically and educationally. I think it just shows the internal migration patterns in Ireland. There would be a much lower pool of non-natives in these counties to go forward for election in the first place. The opposite obviously applies to cosmopolitan Dublin and Kildare with their universities and strong economies. Also worth bearing in mind that it would tend to be "the brightest and best" who leave home and so non-natives in Dublin might be a higher talent pool than the locals. A lot would have moved up for college and so would be more likely to be educated.

Cork of course stand out like a sore thumb and don't fit this theory. Not sure what's happening there.

[Riadach]

I would like to see how this compares with some of our European neighbours.