Civil diocese (Kilmark–Killarney)

A civil diocese (Killarne: escoummheærch civiælta; Killian: escommairch sibheailtai) is one of the three types of county in the Kingdoms of Kilmark and Killarney, counties forming the upper-tier of local government and administrative divisions in both kingdoms. Civil dioceses constitute the second-most common of the three county types, after the more common non-metropolitan county and ahead of the metropolitan county. There are currently 7 civil dioceses in Killarney and 6 in Kilmark, for a total of 13 civil dioceses in the Dual Monarchy.

A civil diocese is identical to a non-metropolitan county in that each of a civil diocese's several districts (between 7 and 20) possesses its own directly elected municipal council which provides and handles most local government services and responsibilities, with the elected county-level council responsible only for the handful of sub-national services and administrative matters which affect the county in a more uniformly county-wide manner. Examples include zoning, streets and public maintenance, property taxes, and municipal services like libraries, community centres, public outreach, water and sanitation, versus roads and expressways, law enforcement, and interurban planning, the former the districts' responsibilities and the latter the county's.

The primary difference between a civil diocese and a non-metropolitan county is that while non-metropolitan (and metropolitan) counties have an entirely secular public administration, civil dioceses are administered in cooperation with the clerical hierarchy of their respective diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, which in the case of all civil dioceses maintains identical boundaries, ie. jurisdiction over one and the same area; metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, by contrast, frequently have boundaries quite different from those of the Catholic diocese(s) in which they are located, in all cases with the clerical administrative hierarchy of the diocese(s) completely separate an entity from the fully secular municipal councils of the respective metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties as well as the districts of the latter.

In a civil diocese, the county council (which uses a council–manager form of local government) consists of a total of between 10 and 21 members: between 7 and 18 members of civil diocese councils are secular members who are each elected by a particular district (officially known as a civil parish) and who represent their civil parish at the county level, while in each case the remaining four members of a civil diocese's council consist of the bishop of the respective Catholic diocese and three other senior clergymen (priests and/or deacons) appointed to the council by the bishop. Each civil parish is in turn coterminous with a particular parish of the diocese. Therefore, each civil diocese has a single cathedral (the seat of the diocese's bishop) located in the civil parish serving as the administrative seat of the civil diocese, which is where the county council meets; the cathedral also serves as the parochial church of the respective parish. Each other parish of the diocese has a parochial church of its own, which is the most important church of the parish. Each civil parish also uses the council-manager form of local government, with each municipality consisting of a 7-member council of 5 secular members elected by the civil parish (district) at-large alongside the pastor and deacon of the parochial church, who, like the bishop and senior clergy in the county council, hold their position ex officio, ie. by virtue of their place in the ecclesiastical system.