The counties of Ireland (Irish: contaetha na hÉireann) are sub-national divisions used for the purposes of geographic demarcation and local government. Closely related to the county is the County corporate which covered towns or cities which were deemed to be important enough to be independent from their counties. A county corporate could also be known as a county of itself. By the early 17th century, all Ireland had been divided into counties. The older term "shire" was historically equivalent to "county". These land divisions were formed following the Norman invasion in imitation of the units of local government then in use in England.[1]
The function of the county was to impose royal control in the areas of taxation, security and the administration of justice at the local level. These powers were exercised by the Cambro-Norman barons initially, then by the Old English nobility. With the waning of the power of the barons, new offices of political control came to be established at a county level.
Since the early 19th century, counties have been adapted to meet new administrative and political requirements; some have been split into smaller divisions while others have been decreased in size to accommodate the creation of areas under the jurisdiction of city councils in major population centres. The counties of Northern Ireland are no longer used for local government; Districts are instead used. They still form the basis for the administration of local government in the Republic of Ireland.
The word "county" has come to be used in different senses for different purposes. In common usage, many people have in mind the 32 counties that existed prior to 1838 - the so-called traditional counties. In the Republic of Ireland, the term may, in official usage, only refer to the 29 modern counties. The term is also conflated with the 34 areas currently used to demarcate areas of local government in the Republic of Ireland at the level of LAU 1.
In partitioning Ireland in 1921, the county was the basic land division employed.
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In Ireland, the usage of the word county nearly always comes before rather than after the county name; thus "County Clare" in Ireland as opposed to "Clare County" in Michigan, U.S.A. The former "King's County" and "Queen's County" were exceptions; these are now County Offaly and County Laois, respectively. The abbreviation Co. is used, as in "Co. Clare". The synonym shire is not used for Irish counties, although the Marquessate of Downshire was named in 1789 after County Down.
The map at the beginning of this article shows the thirty-two traditional counties that were in place in Ireland by early 17th century. Their area does not always correspond with the area of the counties currently used for local government purposes. The map links to county articles by using an image map, which allows it to be used for navigating the encyclopedia in addition to showing geographic locations. Click on a county to go to the corresponding article. Note: Northern Ireland counties are coloured tan; Londonderry is often called Derry: see Derry-Londonderry name dispute.
Areas that were shired by 1607 and continued in existance down to the local government reforms of 1836, 1898 and 2001 are sometimes referred to as "traditional" or "historic" counties. These areas were separate from the county corporates that existed in some of the larger towns and cities although linked to the county at large for other purposes. From 1898 to 2001, areas with county councils were known as administrative counties while the counties corporate were designated as county boroughs. In other cases, the "traditional" county was divided to form two administrative counties. From 2001, certain administrative counties, which were originally "traditional" counties, underwent further splitting.
The political geography of Ireland can be traced with some accuracy from the 6th century. At that time Ireland was divided into a patchwork of petty kingdoms with a fluid political hierarchy which, in general, had three traditional grades of king. The lowest level of political control existed at the level of the called a tuath (pl. tuatha). A tuath was an autonomous group of people of independent political jurisdiction under a Rí túaithe, that is, a local petty king.[2] About one hundred and fifty such units of government existed. Each Rí Tuaithe was in turn subject to a regional or "over-king" Irish: ruiri. There may have been as many as 20 genuine ruiri in Ireland at any time. A "king of over-kings" Irish: rí ruirech was often a provincial (Irish: rí cóicid) or semi-provincial king to whom several ruiri were subordinate. No more than six genuine rí ruirech were ever contemporary. Usually, only five such "king of over-kings" existed contemporaneously and so are described in the Irish annals as fifths (cúigí in Irish). The areas under the control of these kings were : Ulster (Irish: Ulaidh), Leinster (Irish: Laighin), Connacht (Irish: Connachta), Munster (Irish: An Mhumhan) and Mide (Irish: An Mhídhe). Later record-makers dubbed them provinces, in imitation of Roman provinces. In the Norman period, the historic fifths of Leinster and Meath gradually merged, mainly due to the impact of the Pale, which straddled both, thereby forming the present-day province of Leinster. The use of provinces as divisions of political power was supplanted by the system of counties after the Norman invasion. In modern times clusters of counties have been attributed to certain provinces but these clusters have no legal status. They are today seen mainly in a sporting context, as Ireland's four professional rugby teams play under the names of the provinces, and the Gaelic Athletic Association has separate Provincial councils and Provincial championships.
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With the arrival of Cambro-Norman knights in 1169, the Norman invasion of Ireland commenced. This was followed in 1172 by the invasion of King Henry II of England, commencing English royal involvement.[3] The English governed Ireland in a like structure as they did themselves, by dividing the country into shires or counties in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
In general, counties were made by amalgamating various smaller Irish territories which suited the colonial administration at the time and had little basis in older tribal boundaries. In many cases, this involved dividing an Irish territory in two. For example, the kingdom of Uí Maine was split to form south County Roscommon and most of east County Galway. Many of the counties of Ulster roughly correspond to the territories controlled by the principal clan in that particular area such as the O Donnells of Tír Conaill whose political power was concentrated in what would become the County of Donegal.
The counties evolved over time, with the earliest defined being set out by King John, including a then much larger County Dublin. In the Anglo-Saxon controlled territories, a royal official known as a "shire reeve" or sheriff governed the shire. Large parts in the south east of the island had been shired by the Cambro-Norman overlords by the end of the 13th century. Following the resurgence in the 14th and 15th centuries of the Gaelic nobility, the project was suspended, not to be resumed until the mid 16th century by the House of Tudor. There were two phases in this period under the newly created Kingdom of Ireland: the plantation of the midlands under Mary Tudor and the plantation of Munster under her half-sister Elizabeth. By the reign of King James I & VI, the process was completed with the plantation of the last remaining princely domains in the province of Ulster. With the late addition of County Wicklow, the number of counties (Irish: contae or condae IPA: [ˈkʊndeː]).[4] stood at thirty two. This number remained fixed for a little over 200 years until the division of some counties into smaller entities for judicial purposes (1836), initially, followed by complete division in the 20th and 21st centuries.
By 1200 there were also shires of Connacht, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Louth and Tipperary. Waterford, Kilkenny and Wexford apparently date from this time, too, as remnants of Strongbow's palatine county in Leinster. The process continued over time, and in 1206, for example, a special commission was used to determine borders in the Munster area.
The County of Roscommon was separated from Connacht before 1292, and the first session of the Irish parliament in 1297 created the new shires of County Kildare, Meath and Ulster. Carlow, then larger than today, and extending to and including coastal Arklow, probably dates from around 1306.[5]
In the 14th century, "Counties of the Cross" emerged, consisting of scattered areas of church land within the existing divisions. Unlike the secular counties (or liberties), the counties of the cross were administered by royally-appointed sheriffs.
The Tudor administrations finalised the division of Ireland into counties. Westmeath was separated from Meath (often East Meath) in 1543. Queen Mary I of England introduced a new policy to pacify the midland areas - plantation. In 1556 King’s County and Queen’s County were created and the Kingdom of Connacht was broken up into the counties of Galway, Mayo and Sligo, while Leitrim was separated from Roscommon in 1565. At the same time County Clare was created and moved from Munster to Connacht, being returned to Munster in 1602.
In 1583 County Longford was formed from part of Westmeath and transferred to the Province of Connacht.[6]
The Province of Ulster was the last to be shired. The counties of Antrim and Down originated early in the 16th century. These were joined in 1584/5 by the Counties of Armagh, Coleraine (later reformed as Londonderry), Donegal, Fermanagh, Monaghan and Tyrone. County Cavan was also formed in 1584 and transferred from Connacht to Ulster.[5]
The last county to be formed was County Wicklow in 1606-1607, taking in the southern part of Dublin (with the exception of three "islands," exclaves of (mainly) church property), and the northern part of "Catherlough" or Carlow, including Arklow.
Former counties include: County Coleraine, which formed the basis of County Londonderry, the counties of Nether and Upper Tyrone,[7] and Desmond which was, in 1606, split between counties Cork and Kerry. Other names seen on old maps include Caterlaugh or Caterlagh, archaic designations of County Carlow, in the days before much of the north of that county was taken into Wicklow in the early 17th century.
The Earldom of Ulster consisted not only the counties of Antrim and Down, but also at different times the former counties of; del Art (Ards), Blathewyc (Newtownards), Carrickfergus, Ladcathel (Lecale), and Twescard.[8] Carrickfergus would lose its county town status in 1777. Twescard is preserved as the name of a school house at Campbell College, Belfast.
To correspond with the subdivisions of the English shires into honors or baronies, Irish counties were granted out to the Anglo-Norman noblemen in cantreds, later known as baronies, which in turn were subdivided, as in England, into civil parishes and townlands. However, in many cases, these divisions correspond to earlier, pre-Norman, divisions. While there are 331 baronies in Ireland, and more than a thousand civil parishes, there are around sixty thousand townlands that range in size from one to several thousand hectares. Townlands were often traditionally divided into smaller units called quarters, but these subdivisions are not legally defined.
Regional presidencies of Connacht and Munster remained in existence until 1672, with special powers over their subsidiary counties. Tipperary remained a county palatine until the passing of the County Palatine of Tipperary Act 1715, with different officials and procedures from other counties. At the same time, Dublin, until the 19th century, had ecclesiastical liberties with rules outside those applying to the rest of Dublin city and county. Exclaves of the county of Dublin existed in counties Kildare and Wicklow. At least eight other enclaves of one county inside another, or between two others, existed. The various enclaves and exclaves were merged into neighbouring and surrounding counties, primarily in the mid-19th century under a series of Orders in Council.
Counties todayHistoryThe boundaries of the traditional counties changed on a number of occasions. As a result of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 changes were made to the boundaries of Counties Galway, Clare, Mayo, Sligo, Waterford, Kilkenny, Meath and Louth, and others. County Tipperary was divided into two regions: North Riding and South Riding. Areas of the cities of Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Londonderry and Waterford were carved from their surrounding counties to become county boroughs in their own right and given powers equivalent to those of administrative counties.[21][22][23] Under the Local Government Provisional Order Confirmation Act 1976, part of the urban area of Drogheda, which lay in County Meath, was transferred to County Louth on 1 January 1977. This resulted in the land area of County Louth increasing slightly at the expense of County Meath.[24] The possibility of a similar action with regard to Waterford City has been raised in recent years, though opposition from Kilkenny has been strong. Under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, "Home Rule" institutions resulted in the division of Ireland: Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland. The county was the basis of the division with 26 counties forming what would later be known as the Irish Free State and the remaining 6 forming Northern Ireland. This partition was made permanent by the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which was ratified in 1922, by which Ireland left the United Kingdom with Northern Ireland rejoining two days later. Evolution of functionsThe Church of Ireland exercised functions at the level of civil parish that would later be exercised by county authorities. Vestigial feudal power structures structures of major old estates remained well into the 18th century. Urban corporations operated individual royal charters. Management of counties came to be exercised by grand juries. Members of grand juries were the local payers of rates who historically held judicial functions, taking maintenance roles in regard to roads and bridges, and the collection of "county cess" taxes. They were usually composed of wealthy "country gentlemen" (i.e. landowners, farmers and merchants):The counties were initially used for judicial purposes, but began to take on some governmental functions in the 17th century, notably with grand juries. In 1836, their use as local government units was further developed, with grand-jury powers extended under the Grand Jury (Ireland) Act 1836. The traditional county of Tipperary was split into two judicial counties (or ridings) following the establishment of assize courts in 1838. Also in that year, local poor law boards, with a mix of magistrates and elected "guardians" took over the health and social welfare functions of the grand juries. Sixty years later, a more radical reorganisation of local government took place with the passage of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. This Act established a county council for each of the thirty-three Irish administrative counties. Elected county councils took over the powers of the grand juries. Usage in the Republic of Ireland
Main article: Local government in the Republic of Ireland
The twenty-nine counties of the Republic of Ireland number are the basis for local government, planning and community development purposes. Unlike the counties of the United Kingdom, the boundaries of the Republic's twenty-six original counties are still generally respected for other purposes (e.g. divisions of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA)). Administrative borders have been altered to allocate various towns (e.g. Bray) exclusively into one county having been originally split between two counties. Six of the twenty-six original counties have more than one local authority resulting in 29 county councils and 5 city councils - a total of 34 local government entities. County Tipperary was split into North and South Ridings in 1838. These ridings were established as separate administrative counties under the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898. By the terms of the Local Government Act 2001, the counties of North Tipperary and South Tipperary were created. County Dublin was abolished as an administrative county in 1994. Its territory was divided into three counties: Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal, and South Dublin. Additionally, the areas of five large population centres - Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford - have been split from he counties that surround them. They are governed by city councils (previously known as corporations).
Anomalously, the city of Kilkenny is the only city in the Republic not to have a "city council"; it is still a borough but not a county borough and is administered by its eponymous county council. It is, however, permitted to retain the style of "city" for ornament only. These 34 "county-level" entities correspond to the first level of local administrative unit for EU and Eurostat purposes. The second level of local administrative unit (LAU) is the District electoral division. The 2001 Act also provided for the creation of Town councils. Of the administrative structures established under the 1898 Local Government Act, the only type to have been completely abolished was the Rural District, which was rendered void in the early years of the Irish Free State amidst widespread allegations of corruption. At a level above that of LAU is the Region which clusters counties together for NUTS purposes. The Regions are administered by Regional Authorities which were established by the Local Government Act 1991 and came into existence in 1994. EducationThe Vocational Education Committee system was created in 1930. Originally, VECs were formed for each administrative county and county borough, and also in a number of larger towns. In 1997 the majority of town VECs were absorbed by the surrounding county. With the exception of the Dublin area, VEC areas are identical to the local government counties and cities. The separate committees for County Dublin and the former borough of Dún Laoghaire continue to exist. The institute of technology system was organised on the committee areas or "functional areas", these still remain legal but are not as important as originally envisioned as the institutes are now more national in character and are only really applied today when selecting governing councils, similarly Dublin Institute of Technology was originally a group of several colleges of the City of Dublin committee. ElectionsWhere possible, parliamentary constituencies in the Republic of Ireland follow county boundaries. Under the Electoral Act 1997 a Constituency Commission is established following the publication of census figures every five years. The Commission is charged with defining constituency boundaries, and the 1997 Act provides that the breaching of county boundaries shall be avoided as far as practicable.[26] This provision does not apply to the boundaries between cities and counties, or between the three counties in the Dublin area. This system usually results in more populated counties having several constituencies: Dublin, including Dublin city, is subdivided into twelve constituencies, Cork into five. On the other hand, smaller counties such as Carlow and Kilkenny or Laois and Offaly may be paired to form constituencies. An extreme case is the splitting of Ireland's least populated county of Leitrim between the constituencies of Sligo-North Leitrim and Roscommon-South Leitrim. Each county or city is divided into Local Electoral Areas for the election of councillors. The boundaries of the areas and the number of councillors assigned are fixed from time to time by order of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, following a report by the Local Government Commission, and based on population changes recorded in the census.[27] Usage in Northern IrelandMain article: Counties of Northern Ireland
In Northern Ireland, a major re-organisation of local government in 1973 replaced the six traditional counties and two county boroughs (Belfast and Derry) with twenty-six single-tier districts for local government purposes, and these cross the traditional county boundaries. The six counties and two county boroughs remain in use for some purposes, including Lord Lieutenants, vehicle number plates, and the Royal Mail postcode address file. Other usesThe administrative division of the country along the lines of traditional counties was also adopted by non governmental and cultural organisations such as the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association, which continues organises its activities on largely on this basis. GAA county division continue to strong loyalties. Alphabetical list of current countiesMost local administrative units of the Republic of Ireland are based on geographicaly defined counties and are governed by "county councils". Five other administrative units are not based on counties but on the geographically defined cities and are governed by "city councils". These cities are Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Waterford. The borders of the counties mostly match those of the traditional counties. While the cities are non county, in Irish law, they enjoy an equivalence in terms of status and powers. The counties of Northern Ireland are not included because "districts" are the current local administrative units. These districts have very different borders to those of the traditional counties.
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