History until partition
Electoral divisions originated under the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act 1838 as "poor law electoral divisions": electoral divisions of a poor law union (PLU) returning one or more members to the PLU's board of guardians. [4] [5] The boundaries of these were drawn by Poor Law Commissioners, with the intention of producing areas roughly equivalent in both population and "rateable value" (rates being the property tax which funded local government). This meant that while electoral divisions almost always contiguous, they might bear little relation to natural community boundaries. Elections used first-past-the-post in single-member divisions and multiple non-transferable vote in those electing two (or occasionally more) guardians. The 1838 act required electoral divisions to comprise complete townlands; an 1839 amendment empowered the Commissioners to ignore this restriction when constituting a large town into a single electoral division and dividing it into "wards" for poor law elections. [6] Typically, poor law wards matched pre-existing municipal ward boundaries, though the respective electoral franchises differed. In 1872, the Poor Law Commissioners were replaced by the Local Government Board for Ireland (LGBI) which had broader powers. The Commissioners and LGBI had power to revise most local boundaries, including electoral divisions. Returns of the valuation of each electoral division were made to Parliament in 1846, [7] 1866, [8] and 1901. [9]
The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 established a system of administrative counties divided into "county districts" (urban and rural districts) run by directly elected county councils and district councils. PLUs comprised one or more county districts, and poor law electoral divisions were renamed district electoral divisions (DEDs). [10] [5] Two rural district councillors were elected from each rural district DED, who were also ex officio guardians of the corresponding PLU. [11] By contrast, urban districts had separate elections for councillors (elected from wards) and PLU guardians (elected from DEDs). [12] The LGBI got temporary power to redraw boundaries to adapt to the 1898 act, which as regards DEDs it used mainly around municipal areas (county boroughs, urban districts, and towns with commissioners). If a municipal border crossed <Name> DED, the LGBI split it into two DEDs, <Name> Urban and <Name> Rural. [13] In general, a town or city's DEDs and wards were given the same boundaries, and a town not divided into wards formed a single DED; however, there were cases of multiple wards in a single DED and vice versa. [14] County electoral divisions (for the county council) were formed from groups of DEDs. [15] [5] The 1898 changes also made DEDs the polling districts for Westminster elections. [16]
Whereas the 1841–1891 censuses had been broken down by civil parish and townland, those of 1901 and 1911 were broken down by DED and townland. [17] The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1919 mandated the single transferable vote (STV) from the 1920 local elections, and the LGBI created multi-seat "district electoral areas" by combining one-seat and two-seat DEDs. [18]
Northern Ireland
After the 1920–22 partition of Ireland, the Stormont government took over the LGBI's powers within Northern Ireland; power to define DEDs fell initially to the Minister of Home Affairs, later to the Minister of Health and Local Government, and finally to the Minister of Development. The Parliament of Northern Ireland abolished STV in 1922 and returned to "district electoral divisions" instead of the larger "district electoral areas". [19] [5] [20] The reconstituted DEDs were delineated in 1923 in time for the 1924 local election. [21] [5] The Ulster Unionist Party used gerrymandering to ensure unionist control in areas with small nationalist population majorities. [19] PLUs were abolished in 1948 on the introduction of the National Health Serrvice, but DEDs remained the electoral units for rural districts, and largely aligned with the wards used in urban districts. There were very few changes to DED boundaries made between 1923 and their obsolescence under the Local Government (Boundaries) Act (Northern Ireland) 1971, except to adjust to extension of urban municipal boundaries. The 1926–1951 censuses were published down to townland level, while for those of 1961–1971, the lowest level of detail was DED or ward.
The 1971 act replaced the two-tier county and district local government model with a single-tier district model, with each of the 26 new districts divided into "district electoral divisions to be known as wards". [22] A boundary commissioner delineating the districts and wards could disregard the old DEDs but use them for reference where convenient. [23] The centres of the new districts of Antrim, Castlereagh and Magherafelt were defined in terms of the DEDs of the same names. [24] The worsening of the Troubles meant direct rule was introduced in 1972; among the changes intended to conciliate nationalists was the reintroduction of STV for the 1973 local elections, based on district electoral areas made up of multiple wards. The term "district electoral division" is obsolete, "ward" being used instead. The Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972 requires a boundary commissioner review every 12 years, and the wards were last redefined in 2012 by the Department of the Environment of the then Northern Ireland Executive. [25]
Republic of Ireland
Because of the 1919 change, DEDs have no independent use in what is now the Republic of Ireland; however, they remained legally defined units used in civil registration, land registration, statistical reporting, [26] and as references for specifying the makeup of larger units, [27] or the location of smaller ones. [28] There were comprehensive revisions of the DEDs in County Dublin in 1971, to facilitate redrawing electoral boundaries in growing suburbs of Dublin city, [29] [26] and again in 1986, when it was divided into the electoral counties of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Fingal, and South Dublin. [30] Otherwise DEDs were rarely if ever changed, so that a few came to cross county/county-borough boundaries which had been adjusted. [31] The Local Government Act 1994 substituted the name "electoral division" to replace both the names "district electoral division" (as used in counties) and "ward" (as used in county boroughs, themselves renamed "cities" by the Local Government Act 2001). This change was commenced in 1996. Ward boundaries had been revised more often than those of DEDs. [32]
There are a total of 3,440 EDs in the state, with an average population of 1,447 and average area of 20.4 square kilometres (5,000 acres). [33] Populations now vary widely, ranging in 2016 from 38,894 for Blanchardstown–Blakestown in Fingal to 12 for Lackagh, North Tipperary and 7 for Ballynaneashagh, Waterford City. [34] The DED/ED has been the lowest level of detail for printed census publications since independence. To maintain confidentiality, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) amalgamates 32 EDs with low population into neighbouring EDs in the presentation of detailed census data. [33] Conversely, more populous EDs are subdivided to provide Small Area Population Statistics (SAPS); whereas sub-DED data could previously be requested from the CSO for a fee, SAPS data has been published online since 2002. The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) classification for Ireland formerly specified as "local administrative unit" (LAU) the 3,441 EDs (counting the Meath and Louth portions of St Mary's ED separately). Since 2019, Ireland's NUTS LAUs have been the 166 local electoral areas. [35]
The counties of Ireland are historic administrative divisions of the island into thirty-two units. They began as Norman structures, and as the powers exercised by the Cambro-Norman barons and the Old English nobility waned over time, new offices of political control came to be established at a county level.
Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Leinster and the Eastern and Midland Region. It is one of three successor counties to County Dublin, which was disestablished in 1994. It is named after the former borough of Dún Laoghaire and the barony of Rathdown. Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council is the local authority for the county. The population of the county was 218,018 at the time of the 2016 census.
The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that established a system of local government in Ireland similar to that already created for England, Wales and Scotland by legislation in 1888 and 1889. The Act effectively ended landlord control of local government in Ireland.
Rural districts were a type of local government area – now superseded – established at the end of the 19th century in England, Wales, and Ireland for the administration of predominantly rural areas at a level lower than that of the administrative counties.
A poor law union was a geographical territory, and early local government unit, in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Administrative counties were a unit of local government created by an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for use in Ireland in 1899. Following the separation of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, administrative counties continued in use in the two parts of the island of Ireland under their respective sovereign jurisdictions. They continued in use until 1973 in Northern Ireland and until 2002 in the Republic of Ireland.
In Ireland, a barony is a historical subdivision of a county, analogous to the hundreds into which the counties of England were divided. Baronies were created during the Tudor reconquest of Ireland, replacing the earlier cantreds formed after the original Norman invasion. Some early baronies were later subdivided into half baronies with the same standing as full baronies.
Northern Ireland is divided into six counties, namely: Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone. Six largely rural administrative counties based on these were among the eight primary local government areas of Northern Ireland from its 1921 creation until 1973. The other two local government areas were the urban county boroughs of Derry and Belfast.
Carrickfergus is a barony in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It is bounded on the south-east by Belfast Lough, and otherwise surrounded by the barony of Belfast Lower. It is coextensive with the civil parish of Carrickfergus or St Nicholas and corresponds to the former county of the town of Carrickfergus, a county corporate encompassing Carrickfergus town.
Kilculliheen is a civil parish, electoral division and barony in Ireland, on the north bank of the River Suir across from the centre of Waterford City. Historically, it has been transferred several times between the county of the city of Waterford and the counties of Kilkenny and Waterford. It now contains the only part of Waterford city on the left bank of the River Suir. The Parliamentary Gazetteer of 1846 states "as it lies on the left bank of the Suir, which, for the most part, divides co. Waterford from co. Kilkenny, most topographists mistakingly assign it to the barony of Ida, co. Kilkenny". It is now partly in County Kilkenny and partly in Waterford City. Of the barony's eleven townlands, five are entirely in Kilkenny and six are split between Kilkenny and Waterford. The city portion contains the formerly rural village of Ferrybank, which gives its name to a wider suburb which has spread across the county boundary.
Civil parishes are units of territory in the island of Ireland that have their origins in old Gaelic territorial divisions. They were adopted by the Anglo-Norman Lordship of Ireland and then by the Elizabethan Kingdom of Ireland, and were formalised as land divisions at the time of the Plantations of Ireland. They no longer correspond to the boundaries of Roman Catholic or Church of Ireland parishes, which are generally larger. Their use as administrative units was gradually replaced by Poor Law Divisions in the 19th century, although they were not formally abolished. Today they are still sometimes used for legal purposes, such as to locate property in deeds of property registered between 1833 and 1946.
Rathdown is the south-easternmost barony in County Dublin, Ireland. It gives its name to the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. Before County Wicklow was shired in 1606, Rathdown extended further south: it was named after a medieval settlement which grew up around Rathdown Castle, at a site subsequently deserted and now in County Wicklow in the townland of Rathdown Upper, north of Greystones. The Wicklow barony of Rathdown corresponds to the portion transferred to the new county; although both divisions were originally classed as "half baronies", in the nineteenth century the distinction between a barony and a half barony was obsolete.
Castlereagh is a townland and former hamlet in the civil parish of Knockbreda, barony of Castlereagh Lower, in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is southeast of Belfast and now at the fringe of the city's suburbs. The townland has an area of 415 acres (168 ha).
Galway is a barony in Ireland, comprising Galway city and surrounding parts of County Galway. The barony is coterminous with the former County of the Town of Galway, a county corporate created by the town's 1610 charter and abolished by the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898.
Ankers Bower is a townland and hill in St. Mary's civil parish in the barony of Brawny, County Westmeath, Ireland. It is partly within the former urban district of Athlone. The name may derive from John Ankers, who was vicar of St. Mary's in 1608.
Drummully or Drumully is an electoral division (ED) in the west of County Monaghan in Ireland. Known as the Sixteen Townlands to locals and as Coleman's Island or the Clonoony salient to the security forces, it is a pene-enclave almost completely surrounded by County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. Since the Partition of Ireland in the 1920s, the Monaghan–Fermanagh border has formed part of the international border between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, leaving Drummully as a practical enclave, connected to the rest of what is now the Republic of Ireland only by an unbridged 110-metre (360 ft) length of the Finn River. The area is accessed via the Clones–Butlersbridge road, numbered N54 in the Republic and A3 in Northern Ireland.
Local government in Dublin, the capital city of Ireland, is currently administered through the local authorities of four local government areas. The historical development of these councils dates back to medieval times.
