Geography of Ireland - Political and Human Geography

Political and Human Geography

Ireland is divided into four provinces, Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster, and 32 counties. Six of the nine Ulster counties form Northern Ireland and the other 26 form the state, Ireland. The map shows the county boundaries for all 32 counties.

From an administrative viewpoint, 20 of the counties in the republic are units of local government. The other six have more than one local authority area, producing a total of 34 county-level authorities. Tipperary has two ridings, North Tipperary and South Tipperary, originally established in 1838 and renamed in 2001. The cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford have city councils and are administered separately from the counties bearing those names. The remaining part of County Dublin is split into Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Fingal, and South Dublin.

Electoral areas in Ireland (the state), called constituencies in accordance with Irish law, mostly follow county boundaries. Maintaining links to the county system is a mandatory consideration in the re-organisation of constituency boundaries.

In Northern Ireland, a major re-organisation of local government in 1973 replaced the six traditional counties and two county boroughs (Belfast and Derry) by 26 single-tier districts, which, apart from Fermanagh cross the traditional county boundaries. The six counties and two county-boroughs remain in use for purposes such as Lieutenancy. In November 2005, proposals were announced which would see the number of local authorities reduced to seven. The island's total population of approximately 6 million people is concentrated on the east coast, particularly in Dublin and Belfast and their surrounding areas.