District Electoral Areas Commissioner (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Order 2006

In paragraph 5, the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Northern Ireland will be substituted by the Registrar-General for Births and Deaths in Northern Ireland. Do we have no marriages left in Northern Ireland? What is the explanation for marriages being omitted? On the general principle of the same person having two different commission responsibilities—the district electoral area and the local government boundary area—I understand that the Local Government Boundary Commissioner is in the process of deciding the boundaries of the wards. Has he completed his work and when is he likely to report to the Government? I understand that the Government are expediting the work of the District Electoral Area Commissioner. I noticed in the press recently that, at a public hearing in the north-west of Northern Ireland, the people of Strabane, who have always been connected with Omagh, objected because they had been recommended to join with Londonderry. They want to stay with Omagh as they have been for decades. The Local Government Boundaries Commissioner ruled at the hearing that he could not consider any changes in the district council boundaries: he could consider changes only in the ward boundaries—to return to that word ““ward””—within the district council. I also wanted to ask about the District Electoral Area Commissioner and his designation of electoral areas. Under this order, he can group between five and seven of the wards together in one electoral area. Since we will now have only seven councils in Northern Ireland, it means that we will have much larger areas than we have been used to. We have 26 councils, as the Minister well knows. Now we will have only seven and they will cover a much greater part of Northern Ireland than previously. I think there are 50 wards in each area. If you group them together in fives, it means a maximum of just 70 councillors in Northern Ireland. If you group them together in sevens, which is possible under the order, it means a maximum of only 50 councillors in the whole of Northern Ireland, if my arithmetic is correct. I am talking about electoral wards, but I said councillors. Let me start again. If you have five wards grouped together in an electoral area and there are seven district councils, there will be a total of 70 groups only in Northern Ireland. If you have 50 district areas and seven of them are grouped together at a time, that is 49, roughly speaking. If these areas are going to be so big—we already know that the district council areas will be big because there are only seven instead of 26—and if you now put seven wards together in one district area, there will be a councillor, elected by proportional representation, representing a massive part of the council area. I am worried that councillors will not be local to the people in Northern Ireland if they are in a council representing a massive part of Northern Ireland and are also representing a very large part of that council area. The commissioner needs to be careful that, where possible, he curtails the number of wards being amalgamated to the minimum of five and not the maximum of seven to ensure that there is some locality in representation by elected councillors. I know that the order is being rushed through and I suspect the reasons for it, but the seven councils are apparently confirmed for Northern Ireland. This was disputed by most of the political parties in Northern Ireland—the argument was that it was balkanisation. I did not necessarily accept that argument, even though my own party said it, because Northern Ireland is balkanised in any case, no matter what you do. Whether there are 26 councils or seven, it will be balkanised, and that cannot be avoided.