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A District Electoral Division (often abbreviated as DED) was a low-level territorial division in Ireland. Ireland (pronounced /ˈaɾlənd/ Éire) is the third largest island in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world In 1994, both District Electoral Divisions and Wards (the equivalent of District Electoral Divisions within the five County Boroughs) were renamed as Electoral Divisions (the boundaries and names of the DEDs and Wards themselves remained unchanged). County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (excluding Scotland) to refer to a Borough or a City There are a total of 4,334 Electoral Divisions within the Republic of Ireland [1].

District Electoral Divisions originated as subdivisions of Poor Law Unions, grouping a number of townlands together to elect one or more members to a Poor Law Board of Guardians. This article deals chiefly with the English Poor Laws covering England and Wales Believed to be of Gaelic origin a townland is a term for a small geographical unit of land used in Ireland; the term was at one time also used in Scotland The boundaries of District Electoral Divisions were drawn by a Poor Law Boundary Commission, with the intention of producing areas of roughly equivalent rateable value (the total amount of rates that would be paid by all ratepayers in the DED) as well as population. Rates are a type of taxation system in the United Kingdom, and in places with systems deriving from the British one used to fund Local government. This meant that while DEDs were almost always contiguous, they might bear little relation to natural community boundaries.

The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 established a system of County Councils and Urban and Rural District Councils and the District Electoral Divisions were then used to elect members to the district councils, with groups of DEDs combining to elect members to County Councils. The Local Government (Ireland Act 1898 (61 & 62 Vict c 37 is a piece of legislation passed as an Act of Parliament by the Parliament of the United Kingdom A County council is the elected administrative body governing an area known as a County. In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, an urban district was a type of Local government district that covered an Urbanised area Rural districts were a type of Local government area &ndash now superseded &ndash established at the end of the 19th century in England, Wales, and

After the partition of Ireland and the establishment of Northern Ireland, the new Unionist government proceeded to redraw District Electoral Division boundaries in the six counties making up the new state. Northern Ireland (Tuaisceart Éireann Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlann) is a Country within the United Kingdom, lying in the northeast of Unionism in Ireland, is a belief in the desirability of a full constitutional and institutional relationship between Ireland and Great Britain based on the terms and The Unionist government and its supporters claimed that this redrawing was necessary because population changes had caused discrepancies in the population of DEDs and it was necessary to change the boundaries to equalise electorates. Irish Nationalists, on the other hand, claimed that the boundaries were being redrawn so as to gerrymander local councils, producing Unionist-majority councils in areas where the majority of the population were Nationalist. Irish nationalism (Náisiúnachas Éireannach refers to political and sociological movements and sentiment that embodies a love for Irish ancestry, culture and language and Gerrymandering is a form of redistribution in which electoral district or Constituency boundaries are manipulated for electoral advantage Certainly, the effect of the redrawing of boundaries was to dramatically reduce the number of local councils under Nationalist control, and examination of the archives of the Northern Ireland government has shown that the Ministry of Home Affairs (responsible for the boundary redrawing) worked closely with local Unionist associations to produce favourable results for the Unionist Party.

With the reform of local government in Northern Ireland in 1973, both county councils and urban and rural district councils were abolished and replaced by a smaller set of district councils. Northern Ireland is divided into 26 districts for local government purposes These councils were divided into wards, each ward containing a number of townlands or parts of townlands. In Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, a ward is an Electoral district As a result, District Electoral Divisions no longer exist in Northern Ireland and the groups of wards used for Single Transferable Vote are known as "district electoral areas". Single transferable vote (STV is a preferential Voting system designed to minimize Wasted votes and provide Proportional representation

In the Irish Free State (later to become the Republic of Ireland), the introduction of Single Transferable Vote for local government elections meant that District Electoral Divisions were grouped together to elect a number of members to the relevant councils. The Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann (1922&ndash1937 was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by Ireland ( Irish: Éire, ˈeːrʲə is a country in north-western Europe. Single transferable vote (STV is a preferential Voting system designed to minimize Wasted votes and provide Proportional representation Rural district councils outside County Dublin were abolished in 1925, with the remaining councils in Dublin being abolished in 1930. County Dublin (Contae Bhaile Átha Cliath or more correctly today the Dublin Region ( Réigiúin Átha Cliath) is the area that contains the city of Dublin This meant that District Electoral Divisions no longer had any electoral purpose in their own right. However, they continued to be used for other administrative purposes, such as building blocks for higher-level administrative divisions like Dáil constituencies and as low-level census divisions. ga '''Dáil Éireann''' ( English House of Representatives of Ireland) is the principal chamber of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament

Outside Dublin, most DED boundaries have remained unchanged since 1898. In County Dublin, however, the rapid increase in population of the city's suburbs has meant that District Electoral Divisions have been periodically redrawn so as to produce smaller divisions of a convenient size. In addition, the expansion of the city boundaries of Cork, Limerick and Waterford and the establishment of Galway as a County Borough in 1985, required the redrawing of ward boundaries within the cities, and the consequent adjustment of the DEDs affected by the boundary changes. Cork (Corcaigh is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland 's third most populous city after Dublin and Belfast Limerick (pronounced /ˈlɪmrɪk/ Luimneach in Irish) is a city and the county seat of County Limerick in the Province of Munster Waterford ( or Windy fjord;) is a city in Ireland. It is the primary city of the South East region and the fifth largest in the country Galway (Gaillimh is the only city in the province of Connacht in Ireland.

Because the boundaries of District Electoral Divisions have largely remained unchanged since 1898, their populations vary widely, ranging from 32,305 for the Electoral Division of Blanchardstown-Blakestown in Fingal to 16 for the Electoral Divisions of Arigna in County Leitrim and Lackagh in North Tipperary (figures from the 2006 Census of Population). Blanchardstown ( Baile Bhlainséir in Irish) is a growing outer suburb of Dublin, Ireland. The County of Fingal ( is a county in Ireland. It was formed from part of the historic County Dublin. County Leitrim ( is one of the counties of Ireland and is part of the province of Connacht. North Tipperary County (Contae Thiobraid Árann Thuaidh known until 2002 as Tipperary North Riding) is an Administrative county in Ireland, consisting District Electoral Division boundaries also tend to bear little relation to the boundaries of natural communities in rural Ireland such as parishes, with the result that most people will have little or no idea as to which Electoral Division they live in. A parish is a Local church; it is an administrative unit typically found in episcopal or presbyterian churches

References

  1. ^ http://www.cso.ie/census/SAPs.htm 2006 census: small area population statistics (SAPS)

External links

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