District Electoral Division - Republic of Ireland

Republic of Ireland

In the Irish Free State (later to become the Republic of Ireland), the introduction of the 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. Rural district councils outside County Dublin were abolished in 1925, with the remaining councils in Dublin being abolished in 1930. 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 low-level census divisions, and building blocks for delimiting Dáil constituencies. Electoral areas for local authorities are not required to observe electoral division boundaries, though those for county councils usually do.

Outside Dublin, most DED boundaries have remained unchanged since the 1850s. 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.

Because the boundaries of district electoral divisions have largely remained unchanged since the nineteenth century, 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). 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.