THE HIGH COURT
RECORD NO. 2819P/2007
Between
CATHERINE MURPHY and
FINIAN McGRATH
Plaintiffs
And
THE MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, HERITAGE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT, IRELAND AND THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
Defendants
In the light of the Defendants’ public statements since service of the Proceedings, on our clients’ instructions we have sent a letter (available here in pdf format) to the Defendants’ Solicitor today.
Read your letter with great interest. I am baffled by the intractability of the Minister/Department on this. I would have thought they’d have learned the lesson of the Electoral Register where the Sunday Tribune flagged the problem at least a year before it became a ‘crisis’ last summer (which it still is… as Pat Rabbitte pointed out over the weekend).
Surely the number of planning permission applications for high-density apartment block and/or housing estates where there used to be farms should have been a hint that there might be an issue with constiuency boundaries and representation quite some time ago? Surely a reasonable person might have considered having a continency plan in place to investigate and/or advise on the issue? Something at least.
In the end we are left with a Government department hiding, it would seem inaccurately, behind a statement of the AG.
The government relying on inaccurate information in the operation of key functions of the State…. at least there is consistency if not completeness or accuracy.