I’ve noticed that electoral district boundaries show up on OSM as village boundaries, they’re all tagged as boundary=administrative with admin_level=9 when I think it’s fairly clear that they should be tagged as boundary=political without an admin_level tag. I’m planning on bulk editing them if there’s widespread agreement.
They are described by the Government as “the smallest legally defined administrative areas in the State”.
Is your claim that they are not administrative areas? Perhaps you are right, but I think you need to explain why you believe that.
The interpretation of level 9 administrative areas as “village” is not part of the tag definition, it’s just a rough approximation used in some parts of the OSM interface. It’s the nature of administrative boundaries that they need to be interpreted within each country’s context.
While they’re defined by the government as administrative areas, I never see them referred to in an administrative context. Municipal Districts and their county councils all still seem to break up their regions into townlands and civil parishes when making area plans while electoral divisions seem to only be referred to by the electoral commission and the census, which don’t play a direct administrative role. Therefore I think it would be more accurate to tag them as political rather than administrative boundaries, even though the legislation uses the word administrative to describe them.
I’m not sure if that distinction is particularly helpful, as administration is political in the sense that it is politically accountable. On a point of information I would add there are several organisations who use combinations of EDs in their local geography, examples HSE’s Local Health offices and An Garda Siochana. Local Development projects - like Leaders and Partnerships also use EDs. They use these in combination, but almost always confirm to their boundaries at some point.
What I believe drives your question is that you don’t detect any unified system of small geography universally used by the state. You are right.
Now the case for EDs
- There isn’t anything generally used that can be seen to be level 9 other than EDs
- These boundaries are also historical, so a lot of geneology users need it to locate churches and graveyards.
To be honest, if there are data consumers expecting them to remain at admin_level=9 then they should probably stay that way.
Well sir I can tell you that electoral boundaries here in the Kingdom of Mourne are correct 
Relation: Ballyward ward (15903239) | OpenStreetMap
There is no such thing as a village boundary in legal terms.
Villages grow (mainly) and as they do we get a synthetic boundary after every census showing the then boundary. These are in osm as boundary=census and they have to be uploaded in their latest form every 5 years. This show an aggregate town/village area at a point in time that lasts for 5 years.
We, sadly, never used them for town elections when we had those elections and really we should if town council elections ever come back. But the CSO will determine them as they have for many years albeit not legally but statistically.
For Gods sake leave the admin level=9 boundaries alone.
They cover the entire LAND area of the state.
Every townland fits perfectly in one…or should.
Everything bigger, an LEA or a Constituency or a Municipal District is a collection of EDs going back to the mid 19th century or so.
A political boundary does not cross ED boundaries with only one odd lacuna (that is if elections are ever conducted in the Gaeltacht again) . Otherwise it follows ED boundaries.
All our official stats going back many years are by ED.
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