The battle lines have been drawn for the general election, according to a Government Minister.
Yesterday the Electoral Commission released the re-drawing of Dáil constituency boundaries - creating 14 new TDs as a result.
Cork North and South Central have been redrawn and both revert back to five seat constituencies.
20,000 people come into Cork South Central from Ballincollig while Mallow will transfer from Cork East to Cork North Central and Buttevant and Doneraile will move from Cork East to Cork North West
On the national picture, our Political Correspondent Seán Defoe says the redraw points to only one likely Government next time around:
"The majority of the next door has 87 seats. So that's the minimum needed for a Government and even if Sinn Fein were to double the number of seats, which would be very optimistic they'd still be 15 votes shy of a majority, pretty unlikely they'll be able to make that up with smaller parties given Sinn Fein is going to take votes away from them and cannibalize their vote. That means they need to coalesce with a larger party. So the only combination that makes sense based purely on the math's of it, is a Sinn Fein- Fianna fall Government."
