Three things the planning data shows about Irish renewables
We track every solar, wind and battery planning application in Ireland — 2258 of them, across all 31 planning authorities. These are three things the data says that nobody has published before. All of it is public information; none of it had been joined together.
1. Where you apply matters more than it should
Across 1572 decided applications, the median took 99 days from lodging to decision. But that national figure hides the real story. Fingal County Council decided in a median of 45 days. Carlow County Council took 252 — 5.6 times longer, under the same law and the same statutory deadlines.
The full table, by authority and by technology →
2. One request triples the wait
When a council asks an applicant for further information, the median decision took 196 days. When it did not, the median was 54 days. That is 3.6 times the difference, and it is a bigger factor than which county the application is in.
It holds inside every technology and inside every authority large enough to test, and the projects are not meaningfully different in size — so this is not simply large schemes attracting questions. Without a request, almost every council decides in about 54 days. Much of the county variation above is not councils working at different speeds. It is councils asking for further information at different rates — 20% of decided applications in Donegal County Council, 68% in Monaghan County Council.
3. Most refusals do not survive appeal
Of 121 council refusals appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála and decided, 75 were granted permission — 62%. 40 had the refusal upheld.
It does not work the other way. Of 135 appeals against a council grant, the Commission refused 2.
How this was put together
Every figure comes from the public planning registers of all 31 planning authorities and from An Coimisiún Pleanála's own case register, collected automatically four times a day. Nothing is estimated and nothing is modelled.
These are records of what happened, not forecasts. This site does not predict how any application will be decided or how long it will take. Where a figure rests on a small number of cases, that number is published beside it.
Journalists and researchers: the underlying data is free to use. Every page on this site names its sources, and the counts behind each figure are shown alongside it. If you want a figure checked or cut a different way, the contact address is on the about page.