IF you are one of the three quarters of a million people living in Dublin West, Dublin North, Meath, Louth, Kildare South, Laois or Offaly, your constitutional rights will be seriously infringed every day for the next five years. Last week's publication of the census figures was final proof (if it were needed) that the upcoming general election will be fought on constituencies that absolutely breach the constitution's requirement for equality of representation.

The final figures show that two constituencies . . . Dublin North and Dublin West . . . now have a population in excess of 30,000 per TD, beyond the TD-per-head-of-population ceiling laid down by the constitution.

A further nine constituencies are either over- or under-represented to a level beyond what the courts have previously laid down as an acceptable variation of article 16.2.3 of the constitution's requirement that every constituency have, within reason, the same ratio of TD per population.

Two examples illustrate the point in a way which is impossible to ignore. In next month's general election, the population of 92,800 in Dublin West will elect three Dail deputies, while the 91,368 population of Cork North-Central will return four TDs. Meanwhile, in Dublin North, the population of 120,309 will return four TDs, while four other constituencies with a smaller population . . . Cavan-Monaghan, Dublin South, Limerick East and Dun Laoghaire . . . will elect five TDs.

Obviously, it is now too late to change the constituencies before the election. But the fact is that this clear breach of the constitution was obvious last July when what are known as the "preliminary" population figures were published.

At that point, based on those figures, there would have been ample time to establish a boundary commission to redraw the constituencies before the election to ensure the constitutional requirement for equality of representation was upheld.

But the reality is that neither the government nor the main opposition party had any interest in doing this. It would have upset their carefully-laid electoral plans.

The government, backed up by Fine Gael, opted not to act on the preliminary figures, arguing it had to wait until the final figures were published before establishing a boundary commission. This is despite the fact that the constitution makes no distinction between the final and preliminary figures, and that the Central Statistics Office made it clear there would be little or no distinction between the two sets of figures . . . the publication of the final figures last week confirmed this point.

There was some talk last autumn, from a number of independent TDs, of a Supreme Court challenge to the Dail constituencies on the basis that the available preliminary population figures should be used to redraw the constituencies. Understandably enough, it came to nothing.

Such challenges are expensive and timeconsuming. And while many senior legal figures believed the argument for using the preliminary figures to tackle the undeniable inequality of representation in many of the constituencies was extremely solid, there was no guarantee of success.

It is a real pity that it could not have been tested. Because nobody can argue that the current situation where seven constituencies are constitutionally underrepresented and a further 12 are over-represented, is acceptable.

Odran Flynn, the political analyst who first highlighted this constitutional issue in the Sunday Tribune, warns that with the tendency of the Dail to now run its full fiveyear term, and the current five-year cycle of the census, the problem is only going to get worse.

The government will establish a boundary commission within months to redraw the constituencies based on the 2006 census figures. But, assuming the next two Dail run their full course, those constituencies will remain the same until 2017. There will, of course, be a census in 2011 but by the time the final figures are published the following year, it will be too late for the 2012 general election.

However, between now and 2017, there will be enormous shifts in population.

Flynn cites the example of Dublin MidWest, where the massive Adamstown development is taking place. "With a current population of 100,399, it is correctly represented by four TDs. But the 2006 census predated the Adamstown development, which will have a population of 30,000 by 2010. Bear in mind, the 2011 census will not affect constituencies until the 2017 general election, so the population per TD will be somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 by then, " Flynn says.

Unless the political establishment is happy to oversee such a flagrant breach of the spirit of . . . and arguably the very letter of . . . the constitution, some action is necessary. One solution suggested by Flynn is that an interim census, restricted to counting the population, is carried out every two-and-a-half years, with the results used to determine the make-up of the Dail constituencies.

Whatever the answer, this problem cannot be put on the long finger and the collective head-in-the-sand approach of Fianna Fail, the PDs and Fine Gael must end. If and when an independent electoral commissioner takes office . . . and such an office has been promised by environment minister Dick Roche . . . part of his or her remit must be ensuring that the primacy of equality of representation is reestablished. This issue goes to the very heart of our democracy . . . it is simply too important to ignore.