From the 1880s the issue of local government reform in Ireland was a major political issue, involving both Irish politicians and the major British political parties. Questions of constitutional reform, land ownership and nationalism all combined to complicate matters, as did splits in both the Liberal Party in 1886 and the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1891. Eventually, the Conservativegovernment of Lord Salisbury found it politically expedient to introduce the measures in 1898.
The legislation was seen by the government as solving a number of problems: it softened demands for home rule from Nationalists, it eased the burden of agricultural rates on Unionist landlords, it created a more efficient poor law administration and it strengthened the Union by bringing English forms of local government to Ireland.[4][5]
The existing system and earlier attempts at reform
Counties and baronies
Each county and county corporate of Ireland was administered before the 1898 Act by a grand jury. These bodies were made up of major landowners appointed by the assizes judge of the county. As well as their original judicial functions the grand juries had taken on the maintenance of roads, bridges and asylums and the supervision of other public works. The grand jury made proposals for expenditure known as "presentments" which required the approval of the assizes judge. The money to pay for the presentments was raised by a "county cess" levied on landowners and occupiers in the county, a form of rate tax.[6] A second tier of administrative division below the county was the barony. A similar system operated at this level, with the justices of the area empowered to meet in baronial presentment sessions to raise a cess to fund minor works.[6]
By 1880 the members of the grand juries and baronial sessions were still overwhelmingly Unionist and Protestant, and therefore totally unrepresentative of the majority of the population of the areas they governed.[5] This was because they had represented and were chosen from the actual taxpayers since the Middle Ages, and retiring members were normally replaced by similar taxpayers from the same social class. The understanding was that larger taxpayers had a greater motive to see that the tax money was spent properly. The Representation of the People Act 1884 created a much larger electorate that had very different needs and inevitably wanted to elect local representatives from outside a narrow social élite. By now public works such as roads and bridges were being funded increasingly by central government via the Office of Public Works.
Poor law unions and sanitary districts
In 1838 Ireland was divided into poor law unions (PLUs), each consisting of a geographical area based on a workhouse. The union boundaries did not correspond to those of any existing unit, with many rural areas crossing into two or more counties. The unions were administered by Boards of Guardians. The boards were in part directly elected, with one guardian elected for each electoral division.
With the growth of population a need to create authorities to administer public health and provide or regulate such services as sewerage, paving and water supply arose. The Public Health (Ireland) Act 1878 created sanitary districts, based on the system already existing in England and Wales. Larger towns (municipal boroughs and towns with commissioners under private acts or with a population of 6,000 or more) were created urban sanitary districts: the existing local council became the urban sanitary authority. The remainder of the country was divided into rural sanitary districts. These were identical in area to poor law unions (less any part in an urban sanitary district), and the rural sanitary authority consisted of the poor law guardians for the area.
In 1888 Chamberlain again called for democratically elected county councils in Ireland, as a part of a crash programme of state-funded public works, in his book A Unionist Policy for Ireland.
Directly elected county councils were introduced to England and Wales by the Local Government Act 1888 and to Scotland by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889. Attempts to bring about similar reforms in Ireland were delayed because of the civil unrest caused by the Plan of Campaign. The government argued that before they could bring in administrative reforms, law and order should be restored. Accordingly, Arthur Balfour, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, introduced coercion acts to end the "agrarian outrages". Unionists, increasingly losing seats to members of the Irish National League at elections of guardians, also sought to delay implementation.[5][8]
Balfour announced on 10 August 1891 that local government legislation would be introduced in the next parliamentary session. The announcement was met with protests from Unionists and landlords who predicted that the new authorities would be disloyal and would monopolise their power to drive them out of the country. Balfour, despite the opposition, made it clear that he intended to proceed. With the Irish Parliamentary Party split into "Parnellite" and "anti-Parnellite" factions, he was encouraged to believe that the bill could be used to destroy the demand for Home Rule and further splinter the Nationalist movement.[5]
When the bill was introduced to parliament early in 1892, it was clear that the Unionists had successfully watered down many of its provisions by securing safeguards on their hold on local government. The provisions of the proposed legislation were:
County and district councils, elected on the parliamentary franchise
Transfer of powers of grand juries over roads and sanitation to the new councils
Administration of local revenues and setting of county cess to be decided by the majority of ratepayers
The "safeguards" to protect the Unionist minority were:
Electors to have "cumulative votes" with those paying more cess having more votes
Any ratepayer could challenge the council presentment before a judge and jury
County and district councils could be dismissed for "disobedience to the law, corruption or consistent malversion and oppression"
A joint committee of councillors and grand jurors was to approve all capital expenditure and appointment of officers.[5]
The bill was rejected by almost all Irish parliamentarians, with the support of only a handful of Ulster Liberal Unionists. While Balfour hoped to make the legislation acceptable by tabling amendments, this was rejected by Nationalists who hoped to see a change to a pro-Home Rule Liberal administration at the imminent general election. The bill was accordingly abandoned.[5]
Gerald Balfour as Chief Secretary and the crisis of 1897
The local government legislation was not originally part of the government's programme announced in the Queen's Speech of January 1897. It was also exceptional in that there was almost no popular demand for the reforms. It thus came as a complete surprise when Chief Secretary Balfour announced in May that he was preparing legislation. While he claimed that the extension to Ireland of the local government reforms already carried out in Great Britain had always been intended, the sudden conversion to the "alternative policy" was in fact a way of solving a political crisis at Westminster. Obstruction by Irish members of parliament and a number of English MPs was causing a legislative backlog. Landlords, already angered by the 1896 Land Act, were enraged by the refusal of the Treasury to extend the agricultural rating grant to Ireland. In fact, the failure to introduce the grant was largely due to there being no effective local government system to administer it. Instead, an equivalent sum had been given to the Dublin Castle administration, who had decided to use the money to fund poor law reform and a new Agricultural Board. On 18 May the Irish Unionist MPs wrote to the government informing them that they would withdraw their support unless the rating grant was introduced.[4]
The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Cadogan, held talks with the Treasury and hit upon the idea of introducing the local government reforms as a way to "break up a combination of unionists with nationalists in Ireland" which he felt was "becoming too strong for even for a ministry with a majority of 150!" The introduction of democratic county councils along with a substantial rates subsidy was felt to be sure to placate all Irish members of the house.[4] The government moved quickly, sending a copy of the English Local Government Act of 1888 to Sir Henry Robinson, vice-president of the Local Government Board for Ireland. Robinson, who was on holiday, was instructed to decide how much of the existing legislation could be speedily adapted for Irish use. Within a week came the announcement that a bill was to be prepared.[4]
The political situation after the ensuing 1899 Irish local elections, showing results for the county council elections by electoral division.
The 1898 Act brought in a mixed system of government, with county boroughs independent of county administration, and elsewhere a two-tier system with county councils, along with borough, urban and rural district councils. Urban districts were created from the larger of the town commissioners towns, while the smaller towns retained their town commissioners, but remained in the rural districts for sanitary planning purposes.
The creation of the new councils had a significant effect on Ireland as it allowed a much larger number of local people to take decisions affecting themselves. The county and the sub-county District Councils created a political platform for proponents of Home Rule, displacing Unionist influence in many areas. The enfranchisement of local electors allowed the development of a new political class, creating a significant body of experienced politicians who would enter national politics in Ireland in the 1920s, and increase the stability of the transitions to the parliaments of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland.
The Act led to the modification of a number of county boundaries. This was for several reasons:[11]
Each county district had to be in a single county, unlike the sanitary districts on which they were based
Where an urban sanitary district lay in more than one county, the new urban district would be placed entirely within that in which the majority of the population lay.
Where a poor law union (PLU) lay in more than one county, generally a rural district was created for the fraction each county (for example, Ballyshannon PLU was split into Ballyshannon No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 rural districts in counties Donegal, Fermanagh, and Leitrim respectively). Boundaries were adjusted if one fraction was too small or otherwise impractical.
The eight old counties corporate did not correspond to the six new county boroughs.
The cities of Belfast and Derry were separated from the counties in which they lay and constituted as separate county boroughs.
Four counties corporate were merged into their parent counties.
In the Irish Free State, rural districts were abolished by the Local Government Act 1925[16] (they remained in County Dublin until abolished under the Local Government (Dublin) Act 1930[17]). Urban districts were renamed "towns" by the Local Government Act 2001. The 2001 Act also renamed "county borough corporations" as "city councils". The introduction of a council–manager system in 1929–40 significantly changed the operation of county and city councils. The Local Government Reform Act 2014 abolished the tier of boroughs and towns within county areas and divided all counties (except those in County Dublin) into municipal districts.
As of 17 July 2024[update] the unrepealed parts of the 1898 act in the Republic are sections 6(a),
8,[18] 29, 52, 54, 69(1)–(2), 80, 89, 101(2), 101(4), 102(1)–(3), 109, 110(1), 110(2)(a), and 124, and Schedule 1 parts 3 and 4.[2]
In Northern Ireland, STV was abolished in 1922.[19] The two-tier county–district system was retained until the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972 replaced it with a system of 26 unitary districts from 1973. Some elected councils had been dissolved in the 1960s as tensions grew in the buildup to the Troubles. As of 2001[update] the unrepealed sections of the 1898 act in Northern Ireland were 4, 10, 11, 21, 27, 29, 31, 36, 37, 41, 69, 72, 78, 82, 83, 108–110, and 124.[20]
Robinson, Henry Augustus (1923). "Local Government Reform (1898)". Memories: wise and otherwise. London. pp. 124–136. Retrieved 3 January 2020.
Citations
^LGIA § 124(1); provisions relating to rural districts and poor law unions commenced 25 March 1899. The dates for some other provisions were varied by order.
^"Proposed Alterations in Counties". The Irish Times. 19 July 1898. p. 7.
^ abc"Orders declaring the boundaries of administrative counties and defining county electoral divisions". 27th Report of the Local Government Board for Ireland (Cmd.9480). Dublin: HMSO. 1900. pp. 235–330.
^Local Government (Dublin) Act 1930, s. 82: Abolition of rural district councils in the County (No. 27 of 1930, s. 82). Enacted on 17 July 1930. Act of the Oireachtas. Retrieved from Irish Statute Book.
