About: Town commissioners

Town commissioners were elected local government bodies that existed in urban areas in Ireland from the 19th century until 2002. Larger towns with commissioners were converted to urban districts by the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, with the smaller commissions continuing to exist beyond partition in 1922. The idea was a standardisation of the improvement commissioners established in an ad-hoc manner for particular towns in Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century. The last town commissioners in Northern Ireland were abolished in 1962. In the Republic of Ireland, the remaining commissions became town councils in 2002, and abolished in 2014.