Planning permission grant rates by council — Dublin, Fingal, DLR, South Dublin and the commuter counties

Ireland publishes national planning statistics once a year, a year or more in arrears, and the Office of the Planning Regulator noted in May 2026 that complete application and decision datasets for 2024 were not available to it at all. The councils' own registers, though, are updated daily. This page computes the rates a buyer, an applicant or a neighbour actually wants — grants, refusals, invalidations, decision times, appeals — from the registers of the seven Greater Dublin Area councils we index, each time it is rebuilt. Every figure carries the SQL that produced it.

Coverage, and what a "rate" means here

We hold the full register feed for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Fingal, and applications for Dublin City, South Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow; the sources page has the fetch time for each. A decision's text is free-form in every register ("GRANT PERMISSION", "Conditional", "REFUSE PERMISSION FOR RETENTION", "Invalid - Site Notice", and about 170 other strings), so we classify it by keyword: anything with grant, conditional or approve is a grant, anything with refuse a refusal. Invalid, withdrawn, incomplete and undecided files are left out. A grant rate on this page is therefore grants ÷ (grants + refusals) for decisions made in the window.

Three counties — Kildare, Meath and Wicklow — do not carry an invalidation marker in the feed we hold, so their invalid counts read as zero; that is a data gap, not a compliment.

Grant rates by council

The spread between the highest and lowest is real and persistent, but it is not a league table of leniency. The mix of applications differs: a council receiving many one-off rural houses on unzoned land, or many retention applications, refuses more. Fingal's lower rate in most windows reflects a larger share of rural and agricultural applications than the three Dublin councils inside the M50; Dublin City's high rate reflects a register dominated by extensions, shopfronts and changes of use in an area where the development plan is detailed enough that consultants rarely lodge what will be refused.

What gets refused

The classification is by keyword on the applicant's description, so a "house and garage" is a house and a "retention of extension" is retention. Retention has led this table in every window we have run: a built structure cannot be revised into acceptability the way a drawing can, and the retention applications that reach a decision are disproportionately the works an architect would have advised against. Extensions applied for in advance sit at the other end.

How long each council takes

The statutory period is eight weeks (56 days) from receipt, or four weeks after a further-information reply. A median near 50 days means the councils are broadly meeting s.34(8); the ninetieth percentile is the further-information loop, which depends on the applicant's speed more than the council's.

Appeals and reversals

The national figures from the Office of the Planning Regulator for 2024 — an appeal rate of 5.9% and a reversal rate of 24% — are the comparators. The Dublin appeal rate runs higher than the national one, as one would expect where more decisions concern apartment schemes and contested urban sites. The reversal rate lands close to the national figure.

Invalidations

The OPR's 2023 range across authorities was 8.2% to 36.2%. Invalidation is procedural — notices, drawings, fees — and entirely avoidable; the site-notice guide covers the most common cause.

Where the permissions are being built

A grant is a permission, not a house. The commencement notice lodged on the Building Control Management System before works start is the register's only record that a permission is being acted on, and the four Dublin building control authorities publish theirs.

A notice covers anything from a rear extension to a 400-unit phase, so the count is activity rather than housing output; the Department of Housing's monthly commencement release is the national series. Read the two together: a council with a high grant rate and few commencements has permissions waiting on finance or on the appeal figures above.

How to use these numbers

• As an applicant, the relevant rate is for your type in your council, not the headline: the extension guide computes it for extensions, and the retention guide for retention.
• As a neighbour, a high grant rate does not mean observations are futile. Most grants carry conditions, many of which came from submissions; the appeal figures show the Commission reverses a real share of grants.
• As a buyer, the decision-time and appeal figures tell you how long a live application near the property will stay live.
• As a researcher, click "Show the query" under any figure. The endpoint /guides/stats/{stat}?la=&months= takes any council code and window from 1 to 120 months.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of planning applications are granted in Ireland?

Nationally, most decided applications are granted; the CSO and the OPR publish annual figures. For the Greater Dublin Area councils, the live grant rate for the last twelve months is in the table above, computed from the registers.

Which Dublin council refuses the most planning applications?

The table above shows the current twelve-month figures. Fingal has tended to have the lowest grant rate, reflecting a larger share of rural applications; the mix matters more than the council.

How many planning decisions are appealed?

Nationally 5.9% in 2024 (OPR). The live figure for the seven Greater Dublin Area councils is above.

How often does An Coimisiún Pleanála overturn a council?

Nationally 24% of appeals in 2024 (OPR). The live figure for the Dublin registers, split by direction, is above.

Why do these numbers differ from the OPR's?

The OPR counts all authorities nationally, a calendar year at a time, with its own decision categories. This page counts seven councils, a rolling window, and classifies decision text by keyword. Both are shown so you can see the difference.