IRELAND WILL GET one additional seat in the upcoming European Parliament elections in June 2024.

The European Parliament today voted to add 15 new seats to the European legislative body, in a vote which passed by over 70%. Ireland will now have 14 seats in total to fill in the next election.

It is still unknown which of the three European constituencies that Ireland has will get the seat. A recent review on the state’s constituencies, made no changes to the current Irish set up, awaiting the result of the vote that was held today.

The Electoral Commission said last month that it expects a formal decision to change the seat allocation for Ireland from the European institutions “imminently”.

It added it will undertake another short public consultation and fresh recommendation for the European Parliament constituencies if there is a definitive change.

Fine Gael’s Colm Markey, MEP for Midlands North West branded the decision by the Electoral Commission not to include the proposed extra MEP seat for Ireland as “ridiculous” at the time. 

This change will increase the total number of seats in the parliament from 705 to 720, with twelve member states being given new seats. Spain, France and the Netherlands will all be given two additional seats in the next election.

Nine member states – Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Latvia, Austria, Poland, Finland, Slovenia and Slovakia – will all be given one.

Today, the parliament voted to implement the recommendations, which were suggested in a report in June, to add more seats to its membership with 515 votes in favour, 74 against, and 44 abstentions.

The upcoming elections, held during 6 to 9 in June next year, will take place with the new number of seats in Parliament.

During the debate that preceded the vote, MEPs criticised the European Council’s attempt to influence Parliament in its budgetary functions, and reiterated Parliament’s independence.

The co-rapporteurs regretted the European Council’s failure to immediately inform Parliament it intended to deviate from the original proposal, both in terms of overall seats and on the provisions for a pan-European constituency.

The introduction of the 15 new European seats comes as cabinet agreed to implement the domestic changes to add 14 new TDs, which were recommended by the Electoral Commission’s boundary review last month.