A Kilkenny councillor says voters in the area are not going vote after parts of the county were moved to a new Tipperary North constituency.
Mary Hilda Cavanagh also says other voters intend on spoiling their vote in the next general election in protest at the changes.
Last month, the Boundary Commission announced that parts of north-west Kilkenny be subsumed into a new three-seater Tipperary North constituency affecting 6,431 voters.
The Fine Gael cllr told the Saturday Show with Edward Hayden earlier that the news came as a shock and many are still not happy with the decision…
“We didn’t see it coming so much so when somebody rang me from KCLR, I actually
thought it was a joke. If it had been near to the first of April, I’d have thought it was an April Fool’s joke. It was such a shock and I say this with no reflection on the county of Tipperary or the people of North Tipperary, but we’re not happy to be asked to vote in North Tipperary.
“People are absolutely devastated. They feel that they were treated with utter contempt by the Boundary Commission. They were totally misunderstood. They don’t realise as people said to me, there’s a hard border between Tipperary and Kilkenny, the part of Kilkenny that I live in.”
“If they had to say there’s a new constituency being set up, North West Kilkenny / North Tipperary or North Tipperary / North West Kilkenny, people would eventually get ownership. They’d feel part and parcel, but they feel as they’ve been disenfranchised.
“They tell me they’re not going to vote and more of them have told me that they’re going to go in and spoil the votes. They’re going to go up Kilkenny on the ballot paper.”
