Re Brendan's 6:47 message --

Stability? Oh come ON. That organisation is not under any threat of instability. And all those long comparisons with the US government are irrelevant. The US government has to coordinate 50 separate states, all with different laws, some of them pretty heavy (divorce terms, death penalty or not, etc). There no way you can compare a huge country which has a population of something like 200 million very different groups of people with one organisation in one city dedicated to one particular culture. I simply do not believe Comhaltas' stability would be threatened by giving its members a fair say in amending the constitution.

> How to weigh that stability against the needs of democracy

The needs of democracy are for fair representation. Don't try to muddy the issue with bringing in irrelevant comparisons with the American governmental structure.

If you don't know why the 6 year rule applies, someone there must. (So do we. Preserving the status-quo.)