A modest proposal to re-organise councils?

A proposal developed by Michael Moriarty and formed the background to a recent article by Jude Collins, which suggested a Nationalist plan B for the re-organisation of local councils. Something that may be particularly important if efforts to re-invigorate a local Assembly fail. He submitted detailed tables, but we don’t have anyway of displaying these coherently on Slugger. It may be possible to host them on Tony Bowden’s exellent NI Gov wiki site!Here’s a crude breakdown of the religious demographic of the proposed new council areas:

All Persons Catholic %Catholic

Antrim 229,064 46,579 20%
Armagh 324,183 184,568 57%
Belfast 363,187 176,125 48%
Coleraine 276,405 156,542 57%
Down 268,387 33,576 13%
Tyrone 224,028 140,022 63%

The green and orange map is self explanatory. You would need to provide a short discussion of the expanded Belfast The expanded Belfast includes the Dunmurry Cross DEA (District Electoral Area ) of Lisburn, the Antrim Line DEA and Valley ward of Newtownabbey and most of the South and West DEA’s of Castlereagh.

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