County Wexford will have two new electoral areas, Kilmore (5 seats) and Kilmuckridge (4) if the recommendations of the Local Electoral Area Boundary Committee No. 1 Report 2018, presented on Wednesday to the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, John Paul Phelan, T.D. is accepted, which is anticipated as the Ministerial response.
The present electoral areas are Enniscorthy (8 seats), Gorey (8), New Ross (8) and Wexford (10) – a total of 34 public representatives.
The Report is recommending a division of the county into six local electoral areas, to be formed with a focus around urban centres as follows; Enniscorthy (6), Gorey (6), Kilmore (5), Kilmuckridge (4), New Ross (6) and Wexford (7) – the same representation of 34.
The Report says the population based on the 2016 Census is 149,722, an increase of 3% on the 2011 Census population of 145,320.
The largest settlement is the county town of Wexford with a population of 20,188, representing 13% of the total population. Enniscorthy, Gorey and New Ross have also shown increased census.
The individual average population per member in Wexford is 4,404. The terms of reference require a variance from individual average local authority representation within the range of plus or minus 10%.
For Wexford this represents a range between 3,963 and 4,844.

The Committee was appointed on December 13th 2017 to review and make recommendations on the division of local authority areas outside of Dublin, with the exceptions of Cork County, Cork City, Galway County and Galway City.
This involved reviewing the division, into local electoral areas, of 23 local authority areas, which are currently divided into 89 local electoral areas and represented by 623 Councillors.