History
The administrative counties were created by the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. The Act established a new system of local government in Ireland, consisting of county councils, similar to the systems created for England and Wales by the Local Government Act 1888 and for Scotland by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889.
As in England and Wales, the Act created county boroughs of Ireland's largest towns which were independent of their surrounding county councils, but in contrast to England, the county boroughs were deemed to be administrative counties themselves. Thus there were 38 administrative counties, of which 8 were county boroughs. After the separation of the Irish Free State, eight administrative counties remained in Northern Ireland (including two county boroughs), while the Irish Free State had 30 administrative counties (including four county boroughs).
The administrative counties of Northern Ireland were abandoned as local government areas by the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972. The Act came into effect in 1973.
Galway city become a county borough in 1986. In 1994 the administrative county of Dublin was abolished and its area was divided into three parts for the purposes of local government: Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin.
In the Republic of Ireland, the 1898 Act was replaced by the Local Government Act 2001, which came into operation on 1 January 2002. The Act adopted the simple title county in place of administrative county.
Read more about this topic: Administrative Counties Of Ireland
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—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)