A Teachta Dála, or TD, is an elected member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of parliament in the Republic of Ireland.
The Irish constitution provides that there must cannot be more than one TD for every 20,000 people, or less than one for every 30,000. Currently the ratio is about one TD for every 21,000 people in the Republic of Ireland, for a total of 166 TDs.
They are elected during the normal Irish election process, which is a system of Proportional representation with Single transferable vote. They are elected for a period of seven years, or until the Dáil is dissolved, whichever comes first.
Anyone who is a citizen of Ireland and over 21 years of age is eligible to run for election as a TD but, as with most democracies, Irish elections tend to have many candidates running for the limited number of seats.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump