Talk:Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898
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[edit] 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)
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- 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)
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- 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)
- 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)
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- "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)
