Talk:Dublin Corporation

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Dublin City Council redirects to Dublin Corporation - is this desirable? --Ryano 11:38, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Untitled[edit]

We should consider moving the page. Djegan 12:35, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Move requested --Ryano 21:50, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Agree the current name of the authority, "Dublin City Council", is more appropriate. Djegan 21:59, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Agree - though "the Corpo" has a illustrous (!) history. Ulysses and all that. But the content remains and the redirect will still find it. Use the modern title. --Red King 23:17, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Oppose Dublin Corporation and Dublin City Council are not the same. The Corpo existed in city government in a different way to Dublin City Council, was a two chamber entity, operated under royal charter, and had a different legal personality. Only the article dealing with the entity created under Noel Dempsey's Act should be at DCC. Everything before then should be at DC as it was different. Putting them together would be the equivalent of putting the Lord Protector at British Monarchy, the President of the Spanish Republic at Spanish monarchy, or indeed the House of Commons of Southern Ireland at Dáil Éireann. They are in each case part of a series, not the same. FearÉIREANN(talk) 00:53, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Agree astiquetalk 01:26, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Agree Use a redirect, note the previous history to satisfy the pedantic, and let efficiency and user convenience rule over confusion. Pete 22:55, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've done what should have been done to start with. I've moved details of the modern city government to DCC, and turned Dublin Corporation into an article about the system of government previous to 2003, with the old coat of arms, details of the bicameral city government prior to the British reform of city government in the mid-19th century, etc. I'll add in more historic stuff on the page here and add in more about the modern system, the current political alignments, administrative offices and changes under the Local Government Act to the page on the current DCC page. Why instead of nonsensical moves people didn't do this to start of with I'll never know. Moving facts to wrongly named pages is in danger of making Wikipedia a joke of an encyclopaedia when 99.9% of the information actually would be on the wrong page under a rename. FearÉIREANN(talk) 23:06, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why are you doing this in breach of what looks like a consensus? Pete 23:24, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I thought I had added a comment to your original Oppose vote above, but I must not have saved it. My point was that Dublin City Council and Dublin Corporation are the same organisation - the only thing that changed in 2002 was the name. Everything pertaining to Dublin Corporation - its staff, its management, its elected members, its administrative area, its property, legal agreements made in its name etc. etc - was carried over. The other changes you mention above occured over the course of the Corporation's history, and well before 2002. I would contend that making a distinction based on the name change in 2002 is rather arbitrary. You could equally draw a distinction at any other stage in the reform of the organisation.
Having said that, I've no problem with there being separate pages on Dublin Corporation and Dublin City Council. However, I believe it would be misleading to give the impression that these are separate organisations. --Ryano 09:39, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Actually Ryano, they are not the same. DC was an organisation with administrative, executive and legislative functions. Its sort-of legislative functions were exercised by a body called Dublin City Council only since the mid 19th century. The words Dublin Corporation covers a series of Dublin governmental structure from mediæval times, including until the 19th century a bicameral assembly. Even today, there are in reality two DCCs, a product of Dempsey's typically inept lawmaking. One is the assembly, which sets policy in some but not all areas. The other is the wider city government largely run by the City Manager. The regularly clash, with the City Manager overruling the assembly as he is legally entitled to do. In the past, that distinction was easy to describe by using DCC and DC to describe the different, overlapping entities, one of which is a subset of the other. But now it confuses the hell out of everyone, when DCC (the assembly) disagrees with DCC (the City Manager and administration. Only Dempsey, the man who played Hardy to Martin Cullen's Laurel in the electronic voting debaclé, could produce what even Fianna Fáilers admit is a mess. My favourite memory of the local elections was canvassing with a local councillor who was being given a hard time over by voters over bin charges and the closure of a local library. She was saying how DCC had let down the community. He insisted how members of DCC had tried to fight the policy of . . . em . . . DCC. "But you are Dublin City Council" she bellowed. "em . . . no. We are the Council" he explained. "The Dublin City Council you are talking about is the City Manager." "So there are two Dublin City Councils?" she replied. "Well yes . . . and no" he tried to clarify. As we left the door after confusing everyone the councillor called "that asshole Dempsey" every swear word under the sun. "God damn him. Now we get blamed for things Fitzgerald (the manager) does that we have no say over. All because he is Dublin City Council. And we are Dublin City Council." I daren't repeat the language uttered against Dempsey - in case children might read this!!!
In effect, Dublin Corporation was a body created by Royal Charter. Dublin City Council was its elected bit. Now, thanks to Dempsey, a new entity, no longer chartered and on a different legal basis, has stepped in, called Dublin City Council. And it has as its elective bit a body called Dublin City Council. So in some ways it is a Dublin City Council in Dublin City Council. It is as if the US constitution called the US Congress that name, and then called the entire system of government (executive, legislative and judicial) the US Congress also. There would be complete chaos as to who was what. That is the mess Dopey Dempsey left us with. That and his wasted €50 million on an unworkable system of electronic voting. And now his unnecessary postcode nonsense. It is one thing to take one stupid decision. It takes skill to take two. But achieving three must be a record. FearÉIREANN(talk) 19:27, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
You should get out more. Better yet, put yourself up for election. Pete 20:00, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I'm starting to see where you're coming from, but I'm still not convinced that the 2001 act created a new entity and obliterated Dublin Corporation. Perhaps we'd need a lawyer to interpret the position. In practical terms, however, I know that there was no real discontinuity in 2001/2002. Also, there seem to have been a great many changes in the legal personality and status of the Corporation since its origins, so I don't feel we should over-emphasise the 2002 name change. Many of the elements which made up the City Council and Corporation prior to 2002 had diverse origins, such as the offices of Lord Mayor and Town Clerk/City Manager, the City Assembly, the various townships which were incorporated etc. Perhaps we need to look at a sensible way of covering all of the diverse topics of Dublin's City Government and its history under a series of articles.
I also think you overstate the confusion caused by the name change. Bear in mind that the situation in Dublin is now the same as it always was in the Counties, in that both the local authority and its elected chamber are called "X County Council". I don't doubt the veracity of your canvassing story, but I have some experience in this regard and must say it was never an issue. Many people regretted the loss of the Corpo, but they didn't have too much trouble adjusting to the name change. I would hold that confusion over the respective roles of the City Management and the elected members was fairly common before 2002, given that most people are woefully ignorant about the operation of local government.
On another matter, I have no difficulty endorsing your distaste for Dempsey, although I personally think Cullen is in another class of waster altogether. I thought that Dempsey's Local Government bill at least had the progressive measure of directly-elected mayors, which was repealed by Cullen following cold feet on the part of back-bench FFers.
Sorry for going on, this is a topic that interests me! --Ryano 10:02, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)


I have no problem with two distinct articles, provided it is shown that their are two distinct organisations - or at least that their are other significant differences to warrant such treatment - if only history is complex and uses overlapping terms this can be stated in the detail of one comprhensive article. Secondly placing two different versions of a heraldry image into the different articles may to someone who is naive or misunderstands heraldry be lead to compound the believe that both are distinct organisations. Heraldry images are defined by a strict form of words, not a single image, see Heraldry, and this means that images are often subject to a form of artistic licence - the image in Dublin City Council is not official and should be read with the information on the image discription page and [1]. My understanding is that the law [2] regarding the status of the City Council is the Local Government Act, 2001 - and no form of words in the act provide for distinct organisations, rather a thinly worded rename statement. Djegan 18:10, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. The articles have been progressed greatly since the original move request. This is no longer a matter for WP:RM – if you think that there should only be one article then please use WP:DA. violet/riga (t) 17:31, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

1661 not the c13[edit]

I'm sorry to add that it wasn't called DC in the thirteenth century, though the first mayor was appointed in 1229. The same body was renamed after the Restoration in 1661.86.42.201.57 (talk) 20:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1925 abolition?[edit]

There's no mention in this article of its 1925 abolition and reconstitution in 1930. From the Kathleen Clarke article: "In 1919 she was elected as an Alderman for the Wood Quay and Mountjoy Wards of Dublin Corporation and served until the Corporation was abolished in 1925.[13].... In 1930 she was elected to the re-constituted Dublin Corporation for Fianna Fáil along with Robert Briscoe, Seán T. O'Kelly, Thomas Kelly and Oscar Traynor." Does anybody know why it was abolished and what was the difference between the pre-1925 Corpo and the post-1930 one? 79.97.64.240 (talk) 02:03, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]