Leinster (Irish: Laighin or Cúige Laighean) is one of the four provinces of Ireland, situated in the southeast and east of Ireland. The province comprises the ancient Kingdoms of Meath, Leinster and Osraige. Following the 12th-century Norman invasion of Ireland, the historic “fifths” of Leinster and Meath gradually merged, mainly due to the impact of the Pale, which straddled both, thereby forming the present-day province of Leinster. The ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial purposes. In later centuries, local government legislation has prompted further sub-division of the historic counties.
Leinster includes the extended “English Pale“, counties controlled directly from Dublin, at the beginning of the 1600s. The other three provinces had their own regional “Presidency” systems, based on a Welsh model of administration, in theory if not in fact, from the 1570s and 1580s up to the 1670s, and were considered separate entities. Gradually “Leinster” subsumed the term “The Pale“, as the kingdom was pacified and the difference between the old Pale area and the wider province, now also under English administration, grew less distinct. The expansion of the province took in the territory of the ancient Kingdom of Mide encompassing much of present-day counties Meath, Westmeath and Longford with five west County Offaly baronies. Local lordships were incorporated during the Tudor conquest of Ireland and subsequent plantation schemes. Other boundary changes included County Louth, officially removed from Ulster in 1596, the baronies of Ballybritt and Clonlisk (formerly Éile Uí Chearbhaill in the county palatine of Tipperary) in Munster becoming part of Leinster in 1606, and the ‘Lands of Ballymascanlon‘ transferred from Armagh to Louth circa 1630. The provincial borders were redrawn by Cromwell for administration and military reasons, and the Offaly parishes of Annally and Lusmagh, formerly part of Connacht, were transferred in 1660. The last major boundary changes within Leinster occurred with the formation of County Wicklow (1603–1606), from lands in the north of Carlow (which previously extended to the sea) and most of southern Dublin. Later minor changes dealt with “islands” of one county in another. By the late 1700s, Leinster looked as shown in the above map of 1784.
The province is divided into twelve traditional counties: Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Longford, Louth, Meath, Offaly, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow. Leinster has the most counties of any province, but is the second smallest of the four Irish provinces by land area. With a population of 2,858,501 as of 2022, it is the island’s most populous province. Dublin is the only official city in the province, and is by far its largest settlement.
As is the norm for language in Ireland, English is the primary spoken language, but there is an active Irish-speaking minority in the province. According to the Census of Ireland of 2011, there were 18,947 daily speakers of Irish in Leinster outside the education system, including 1,299 native speakers in the small Gaeltacht of Ráth Chairn. As of 2011, there were 19,348 students attending the 66 Gaelscoils (Irish-language primary schools) and 15 Gaelcholáistí (Irish-language secondary schools) in the province, primarily in the Dublin area.
