Moyle District Council

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Moyle District

Geography
Area - Total - % Water	Ranked 14th 480 km² ? %
Admin HQ	Ballycastle
ISO 3166-2	GB-MYL
ONS code	95E
Demographics
Population - Total (2005) - Density	Ranked 26th 16,515 34 / km²
Community	Protestant: 38.3% Catholic: 60.3%
Politics
Moyle District Council http://www.moyle-council.org
MPs	Ian Paisley

Moyle District Council is a Local Council in County Antrim in the north-east corner of Northern Ireland. It covers a largely rural area of approximately 190 square miles (including 42 miles of coastline) and has a population of 15,000. Moyle has the smallest population of any principal local authority in the United Kingdom.

As a consequence, in 1991 the local government boundary commission originally recommended that the council should be merged with the neighbouring Ballymoney council to create a new council called "Dalriada". This was strongly opposed by both councils and also by Ballymena which would have gained the Glens of Antrim and a small part of Ballymoney council in the process. After a public enquiry the plans were shelved and Moyle was preserved.

Council headquarters are in Ballycastle. Other towns in the area include Bushmills (home to the world's oldest licensed distillery which has produced the famous Irish whiskey "Bushmills" since 1608), Ballintoy, Armoy, Cushendall, Cushendun and Waterfoot. The area is very popular with tourists and includes the three best known features of Northern Ireland: the Giant's Causeway (a World Heritage Site), the Glens of Antrim and Rathlin Island (lying 7 miles off Ballycastle).

The Council is composed of 15 Councillors who are elected every four years by a system of Proportional Representation. The council's makeup is currently 4 for Sinn Féin, 2 for the Ulster Unionist Party, 3 Independent Members, 3 Social Democratic and Labour Party members, and 3 for the Democratic Unionist Party - whose numbers were increased following the defection of a UUP member. The Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson are elected on a yearly basis at the Council's Annual General Meeting in June.

Together with the neighbouring Local Council areas of Ballymena and Ballymoney, it forms the North Antrim constituency for elections to the Westminster Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly.