Talk:Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898

2006 posts

"no such thing as "traditional" counties in Ireland. A boundary change is a boundary change."? The wording of the LG(I)A 1898 is exactly the same as the LGA 1888:

• LGA 1888: 1. A council shall be established in every administrative county
• LG(I)A 1898: 1. A council shall be established in every administrative county

Both acts define new areas called "administrative counties", the borders of which were adjusted for more efficient administration. Owain (talk) 08:55, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Nevertheless, there is no "traditional county" movement in Ireland. I live there and I have never heard anyone make that argument. The counties were all created by statute (quite recently in some cases) to supercede native divisions for administrative purposes, and were altered (and in some cases abolished) by statute.

Counties do have a very definite identity (largely fostered by GAA rivalry), for instance County Tipperary has had no legal existence since 1838, it is still a well understood geographical entity. The legal extinction of County Dublin raised some controversy at the time: mainly whether the GAA county would be divided (It wasn't though it has been proposed since). The counties as understood by most people are those as used by the census which groups together (for example) the City (ex county borough) and county of Limerick as "County Limerick" (although they point out these are separate counties). Limerick city has over the years expanded into Clare on a few occassions, and every time it seems to have been regarded as a change in county boundaries. There is much controversy at the moment as Waterford city want to take in their de facto suburbs in south Kilkenny. Nobody has stood up to say the proposed extension of the city boundary isn't making a permanent change in the boundaries of counties Kilkenny and Waterford.

If you have a verifiable source that states that these areas are still in their former counties, fine. Otherwise in my opinion the article should be reverted.

The situation in NI is of course different. They have in effect "preserved counties" frozen (by statutory instrument under the royal prerogative) on the local government county and county boundaries extant in 1973.

Lozleader 13:31, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is no traditional counties movement because unlike in Great Britain, the administrative counties are still very closely based on the traditional ones. From 1889 to 1965 there wasn't a traditional counties movement in GB for the same reason. Small boundary tweaks here and there didn't provoke a movement because they were small and localised. If there ever was mass local government reorganisation in Ireland there'd probably be a similar reaction. Given the NI situation, I don't see why traditional well-understood geographical areas and different local government areas can't happily co-exist. Owain (talk) 14:15, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes there has been a continuity from Tudor times (when the counties took their form) to today inspite of war, independence, etcetera.

I have found a few references to "traditional counties" in Ireland via google. Though none of them are official, they all agree that a "traditional county" is a modern entity, and that it consists of one or more current local authority areas. For instance the traditional county of Dublin would be Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire - Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin. In other words what most people think of as "county Dublin" (including the postal service).

This would mean that the use of the term "traditional county" in Ireland has a different meaning than in England/Wales/Scotland...

I won't revert the article anyway, as in fact the use of the words traditional/traditionally make sense in context (and are suitably ambiguous to allow either side of the debate to interpret them as they wish - not unlike some treaties and legislation passed here!)

Incidentally there have been a number of plans to change the local government system over the years: usually based on a regional level, but they were never popular. Small counties like Leitrim (c. 28,000 pop) hang on against all logic.

As regards the article: I'm not sure if all those boundary changes were made under the 1898 Act: there was legislation in 1836 and 1840 that allowed for detached parts to be annexed to other counties, but it was done by Order in Council, so they're not generally published. I know of a few others but I've no idea when they came into effect.

Lozleader 15:48, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I based the list of changes on comparisons between the county boundaries as recorded on the Ordnance Survey Townland Index maps (drawn in the two decades after 1898) and the lists of Townlands in Poor Law Unions published by the General Registrar's Office (published in the late 1880s and early 1890s). None of them were detached portions of counties - all of those had been taken care of in the 1830s/1840s. PaddyMatthews 17:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

That sounds fairly authoritative. I have since discovered several pieces of legislation changing boundaries prior to 1898: the Boundary Survey (Ireland) Act 1854, Boundary Survey (Ireland) Act 1857, Boundary Survey (Ireland) Act 1859, and County Boundaries (Ireland) Act 1872 all caused changes to be made. It would take a long time to trace all of them.Lozleader 13:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

"traditional county of Dublin would be Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire - Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin... This would mean that the use of the term "traditional county" in Ireland has a different meaning than in England/Wales/Scotland..."'. Maybe not, given that the administrative county of Dublin was subdivided, but the subdivisions were kept within its original boundaries. Assuming there was little or no difference between the administrative county and the original county, people are talking about the same thing. As we've discussed, given that the names and areas are very similar, any small differences between the percieved "traditional county" based on a group of smaller administrative units and the "actual" traditional county would be more-or-less irrelevant anyway. That is the problem with the current "ceremonial counties" in England and Wales - they are based on groups of smaller administrative units but as the borders are radically different in some places it can only give an approximation to the traditional counties, and in some places it doesn't even bother! With more local government re-organisation on the cards we may see an improvement in that department, or perhaps copy the successful Irish model! Owain (talk) 18:49, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Well there would be a difference, there used to be a detached bit of County Dublin in what is now Kildare, but not a lot of people know that! [1]

(Apparently not the people living there, though their reservoir supplies most of Dublin!) :-)Lozleader 19:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Boundary transfers

Is there a source for the boundary transfers? I've checked the text of the Local government (Ireland) Bill at HCPP and §§44-5 relate to boundaries; they don't specify boundaries but rather give the Local Government Board the power to make an Order-in-Council to alter boundaries (§62h). There was a separate Local Government Board (Ireland) Act 1898. Also, Kilculliheen was already a barony (in Waterford) by 1867, although the 1898 Act did bring about its transfer to Kilkenny. jnestorius^(talk) 03:56, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

According to Local government in Ireland: inside out, the orders were made on 1 November 1898. jnestorius^(talk) 05:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

They may well have been published in the Dublin Gazette. Sadly nobody has digitised it and put it online, and in the current economic circumstances not likely to happen any time soon. A day out at the National Library of Ireland then! Lozleader (talk) 12:14, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Was just looking at the Irish Times digital archives. Apparently they published a "map of Ireland showing the New Counties, with the boundaries of each original County" on page 6 of the 19 July 1898 edition. Unfortunately they want to charge me a tenner to look at it. Not today! My public library used to have access but not since they moved from ireland.com > irishtimes.com. Lozleader (talk) 12:46, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

The Local Government Board for Ireland published the boundary orders in extenso in their annual report of 1900, which I was able to extract the information from.Lozleader (talk) 00:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Categorisation

I have just removed this article from Category:Irish Nationalist Movement, for the second time.

Far from being a nationalist goal, the 1898 Act was opposed by the major nationalist parties, because it was part of a series of measures implemented by the then Conservative/Unionist government with the specific intent of "conciliating" Ireland to destroy support for the Home Rule Movement. This has been explicitly stated in the text of the article for some time, with references, in the section headed "Background".

The edit in which it was reinstated included an edit summary "+categ Nat Movement (same period as Government of Ireland Bills) for approval !". This is wrong: the Irish Government Bill 1893 was debated in the UK Parliament, while Gladstone was Prime Minister. The Liberals lost the 1895 election, and the 1898 Act was introduced under the Conservative govt of Lord Salisbury. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:17, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

former Grand Jury system

Where it reads "The members of the grand juries and baronial sessions were overwhelmingly Unionist and Protestant, and therefore totally unrepresentative of the majority of the population of the areas they governed.[3]"

did this really matter if the grand jurors were deciding where to build a bridge or a road? Unrepresentative in respect of Unionism, fair enough, but this is about local, not national, government. What had being Protestant to do with being a good or bad grand juror? Surely the fact that they were involved on the spot meant that they were not included in the despised group of absentee landlords? The phrase as drafted goes beyond WP:NPOV.86.43.191.172 (talk) 11:41, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Take out "totally" or otherwise tone it down, then. The point was that the Nationalist/Catholics were largely (entirely?) excluded from the grand juries, in terms of being eligible (they didn't hold enough property) or being able to choose the members (appointed by a judge). In that sense the bulk of the population were unrepresentated. The creation of elected county councils changed this. There should be a way of phrasing this neutrally... Lozleader (talk) 13:44, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

It is likely that in some of the areas governed by grand juries (e.g. County Antrim, County Down and Belfast (if it was separately administered)), grand juries were not unrepresentative of the the majority of the population in those areas - in terms of politics and religion, at least (no doubt they were socially unrepresentative). How about if we change it to The members of the grand juries and baronial sessions were overwhelmingly unionist and Protestant, and therefore totally unrepresentative of the majority of the population in manyof the areas they governed? Mooretwin (talk) 16:04, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

The County of Longford has been omitted in error

It appears that County Longford has been omitted in error from this article on the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 as well as from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_counties_of_Ireland The administrative County of Longford was established by the 1898 Act and should be included in this article. Source: http://www.longfordcoco.ie/about_us.html Irl32csc (talk) 15:33, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

PLUs were to be in a single county?

Ihave just rewritten the reasons for county-boundary changes section. I haven't checked the source Irish Times article (19 July 1898), but the suggestion "wherever possible poor law unions (PLUs) were to be in a single county" seems false; the 1901 topographical census index of PLUs shows just as many straddling county boundaries as the 1871 index. OTOH the rural districts, whose areas were linked to those of the PLUs, were always required to be in one county. jnestorius^(talk) 20:17, 27 November 2014 (UTC)