Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898

Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898

Act of Parliament
61 & 62 Vict. c. 37
Introduced by	Gerald Balfour
Territorial extent	Ireland
Dates
Royal assent	12 August 1898
Status: Repealed

The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 (

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 Conservative government 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.^[2][3]

The existing system and earlier attempts at reform

Counties and baronies

Each

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.[3] 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

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.

Proposed changes 1888–1892

The first proposals for elected county councils in Ireland were made by the Radical-Liberal Minister Joseph Chamberlain to Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone in 1885.^[5] The electorate had been enlarged by the recent Representation of the People Act 1884. Gladstone and Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish National League, preferred to legislate for Irish Home Rule. However, the First Home Rule Bill was defeated in the House of Commons in 1886. Chamberlain, briefly the President of the Local Government Board in 1886, then left the Liberals to form the Liberal Unionist Party and brought the proposal to his new Conservative allies, who won the 1886 United Kingdom general election shortly afterwards.

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.^[3][6]

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.^[3]

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.^[3]

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.^[3]

Gerald Balfour as Chief Secretary and the crisis of 1897

Following three years of Liberal government, the Conservative–

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.^[2] 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.^[2]

There would not be enough time in a single

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.

County and county borough boundaries

The Act led to the modification of a number of county boundaries. This was for several reasons:^[9]

• 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.

The extents of the new administrative counties and county boroughs, which came into effect on 18 April 1899, were defined by orders of the

Main changes and repeals

Boundaries of Irish

• List of Irish local government areas 1898–1921
• Local government in the Republic of Ireland
• List of rural and urban districts in Northern Ireland

References

Sources

Primary

• Local Government Board for Ireland (1900). Twenty-seventh report. Command papers. Vol. C.9480. Dublin: Alex. Thom for HMSO. §§1–7 and Appendices A. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
• Irish Statute Book:
  • "Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898". 2nd revised edition of the statutes. 1909.
  • "British Public Statutes Affected: 1898". Pre-1922 Acts amendments. 19 January 2017. Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
  • "Local Government (Application of Enactments) Order, 1898". Retrieved 9 March 2017.
  • "Local Government (Adaptation of Irish Enactments) Order, 1899". Retrieved 9 March 2017.

Secondary

• Clancy, John Joseph (1899). A handbook of local government in Ireland; containing an explanatory introduction to the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898 : together with the text of the act, the orders in Council, and the rules made thereunder relating to county council, rural district council, and guardian's elections : with an index. Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and Walker. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
• Gailey, Andrew (May 1984). "Unionist Rhetoric and Irish Local Government Reform, 1895–9". Irish Historic Studies. 24 (93): 52–68.
  S2CID 159923053
  .
• Robinson, Henry Augustus (1923). "Local Government Reform (1898)". Memories: wise and otherwise. London. pp. 124–136. Retrieved 3 January 2020.

Citations