Redrawing county borders to suit Ireland's ‘natural lines’ would benefit politics and sport in the future.
That’s according to Dublin City University (DCU) associate professor of politics Dr Eoin O’Malley, who was speaking to Newstalk Breakfast about his theory that Ireland has been negatively impacted by the “unnatural county lines” drawn by the English.
“They're not ours – they're something that the English gave to us which probably didn't actually draw along natural lines,” he said.
“Those unnatural lines maybe worked well when the English were trying to administer things, they might even have worked well at the start of the State when the population was more spread out.”
Politics
Dr O’Malley said that Dublin’s growth in recent years has not been matched across the country.
“Now we can see that Dublin is much bigger than any other part of the country,” he said.
“Instead of having four counties within Dublin, it might be better to have one.”
Dr O’ Malley said less developed counties would benefit from this return to historical Ireland.
“You certainly can see in some places like Cavan, Monaghan, Leitrim – it might be easier for them to administer and deliver services with the removal of those county boundaries, and the reinstatement of the Ancient Ones,” he said.
“The constituency commission is going to be trying to draw up things, and it'll be told you can't go across the county boundary.
“That makes their jobs much more difficult.”
This is a real 'head over heart' type question. Would you be willing to have our county boundaries rearranged, or even scrapped, in order for the country to run more efficiently? @NTBreakfast pic.twitter.com/ESuGlpVbkv
— NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) May 29, 2023
The GAA
Dr O’Malley said the redrawing of county lines would solve the issue within the GAA that “there are probably only a small number of counties that are big enough and populous enough to be competitive anymore.”
“I was shouting for Limerick yesterday; I have an allegiance, and probably because of the GAA we have this allegiance,” he said.
“I've seen Galway in the Leinster Provincial Championship, so the GAA knows that there is a problem that a small number of counties are dominating.
“That leaves a lot of people in the country without a realistic chance of winning things.
“They might want to reconfigure how their competitions are organised and it might make more sense for them.”
Thousands of Dublin GAA fans gather in Merrion Square in the capital for the Homecoming of the team after they beat Kerry in the All Ireland football final. (PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo)‘Sporting attachments’
Dr O’Malley said the sporting association would likely be the way to convince residents of the new county structure.
“I think you'd be surprised how quickly people can develop sporting attachments, and those sporting attachments will then last on into the future,” he said.
“The GAA didn't create the county structure, but they created our attachments to the county structure.
“Maybe they could be the ones that would take the lead in dismantling it and bringing back what could be an ancient structure of regions.”
You can listen back here:
