The Taoiseach is facing an embarrassing revolt from Fianna Fáil grassroots in Leitrim where senior party members have threatened to resign en masse if the Dáil approves the Constituency Commission's recommendations.
The Leitrim Dáil ceanntar is also erecting large signs at the main approaches to the county which state: "You are now entering Disenfranchised Leitrim. A TD Free Zone courtesy of the Constituency Commission".
Significantly the signs carry the Fianna Fáil logo and the local Dáil ceanntar officers have indicated that they will refuse to take them down if requested to do so by party headquarters.
They are furious the commission recommended that the county remain divided into two constituencies.
The officers, including the chairman Joe Earley, vice-chairman Tom Guckian, secretary Jimmy Gilheaney and treasurer Seamus Earley, have sent a strongly worded letter to the Taoiseach, Tánaiste Brian Cowen and the party general secretary Sean Dorgan expressing the anger of local party members at the commission's recommendations.
In the letter they say the decision to further divide Co Leitrim makes it "absolutely impossible for our county to elect a Leitrim TD".
They also maintain that the people of Letrim feel "more disenfranchised and displaced than at any time in our history" adding that the public blame Fianna Fáil as the ultimate authority rests with the Government .
"It is difficult to accept that in this first decade of the new millennium, when our Taoiseach and our government has worked so hard to restore the franchise and representation in government of the minority in northern Ireland, that an entire Border county could be wiped off the register of Dáil Éireann," the letter states.
