During the Order of Business in the Seanad, I said, The citizens have been asked to take many cuts and tighten their belts and I wonder if there is something which can be done to extend an example here. Senator Buttimer referred to the number of quangos that exist and an bord snip nua pointed out the very large number of those which exist...

An bord snip nua proposed a number of cuts and pointed out the number of quangos that exist. A Minister told me that whenever members of one of those many hundreds of quangos want to see him, a public relations officer invariably would be appointed.

I suggest that if we are asking citizens to accept cuts, some should take place in the Dáil and Seanad. While we cannot reduce the number of Senators without a referendum, Article 16 of the Constitution states there should be not less than one Deputy for every 30,000 in the population and not more than one Deputy for every 20,000 in the population.

These can be fixed by law and not the Constitution. Over the years we have always gone for the largest number of Deputies. I have not been able to work out the sums but if we decided to have a number of Deputies closer to one for every 30,000 people rather than 20,000, there would be a dramatic reduction in the number of Deputies.

I suggest that is something we should consider in these Houses immediately.

I am sure the Government would approve such a move to reduce the number of Deputies.