The main aims of the terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland have been: protection-rackets; cattle rustling; bank robberies; drug-dealing; fuel laundering etc. - need I go on - and they needed to terrorise the ordinary decent Catholics and Protestants to achieve these aims - religion and nationalism and unionism were used as an excuse to 'gather wealth'! These organisations represented only the minority that they indoctrinated and terrorised into joining them.

Getting back to the original scope of the thread, I think the Boundary commission really lost the plot placing an ungainly lump of West Limerick into North Kerry. Madness.

Kerry should be a 5 seater, and a 4 and a 3 for Limerick.

aaye, back on topic, is there any possibility toireasa ferris will stand rather than martin? her proifle will be helped by the euros in the meantime obviously

There's no guarantee that Labour will get a seat in a 5 seat Kerry either.

Its hard to know. Martin is still very active and there's no indication of him going anywhere in the near future. However, nothing is certain the longer the current Dáil stands and anything can happen in a year, let alone 3 years.

Personally I think Martin will stand in the next GE, whenever that comes about.

Limerick and Kerry combined add up to 13 seats, so that wouldn't have worked.

The only real alternatives were a 5 seat Kerry, with a chunk of North Kerry being transferred into a 4 seat Limerick County or taking a chunk out of Clare or Cork to boost the numbers in Limerick.

Perhaps, moving some areas of Clare that are effectively suburbs of Limerick into Limerick City would have made most sense, especially considering you could have moved as many as 10,000 people out of Clare and still had it within the acceptablevariations.

Moving areas like Rockchapel, Dromina etc. out of Cork North-West and into Limerick West would have produced a frighteningly conservative constituency!

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My political compass
Economic Left/Right: 0.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.36

I live in Cork City and I haven't seen a single Toireasa Ferris poster in a car or elsewhere.

The one thing I would say is that Euro votes are all to play for as everyone seems confused about their voting intentions.

I've encountered people who
- don't want to vote for FF, but want to vote for Brian Crowley
- don't want to vote for FG, but want to vote for Colm Burke
- want to vote Green for the green issues but don't know if they'll do it with the party propping up Fianna Fail.

It's going to be a strange election with substantial last minute swings. I'd also predict a low turnout.

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My political compass
Economic Left/Right: 0.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.36

No body will have to wait 3 years for an election,we will have one inside a few months.

All I can Locke is that you must be going around with your eyes closed, as Toireasa Ferris's picture is turning up everywhere. I would agree however, with your other point above voter confusion.