SINN Féin MP Paul Maskey has welcomed a decision from the High Court which found that the Boundary Commission acted unfairly when it failed to consider responses to a consultation on proposed constituency changes.
The new proposals published last year would have cut the number of constituencies from 18 to 17.
In February, a Belfast man brought a judicial review challenging the proposals claiming the Commission has acted unlawfully and unfairly.
On Tuesday, a High Court judge identified a legal flaw in their final recommendations.
West Belfast MP Paul Maskey said, "I welcome today's verdict from the High Court which found there had been legal flaws in the Boundary Commission’s recommendations for changes to constituencies in the north.
"The judgement today found that responses to the consultation on the proposals were not fully considered.
"This case was brought by a Belfast man who was concerned about the proposed changes.
"All responses to consultations should be fully and equally considered.
"Everyone has the right to a fair representation and that requires a fair process."
Speaking outside Court, PL’s legal representative Eoin Murphy of Ó Muirigh Solicitors said:
“The significance of Parliamentary boundaries for representation at the highest level of our democracy is obvious. Once the recommendations are adopted, they will be difficult if not impossible to change for at least the next election, which may affect how individual constituents are represented for several years. Recourse to the courts at this point was our client’s only option to address the assertion that the Commission had acted unlawfully in reaching its proposals.
“Moreover, this challenge is not a challenge to the merits of the proposals in substance but merely the decision-making process, and faithfulness to the statutory scheme, adopted by the Commission. Given the very significant effects of any legal error on the part of the Commission – and the essentially irreparable nature of those errors, the Court quite correctly exercised an intense level of scrutiny and arrived at the correct conclusion that the Boundary Commission had fallen into legal error and acted in a procedurally unfair way in this instance.”
A further hearing on the 6th June 2019 will decide on the final remedies and order in the case.