Wednesday, 28 October 2026

Data Centres in Ireland: A Debate That Deserves Better

A personal discussion piece by Brendan Buck. It is not the opinion of BPS Planning.

I am a town planner, and if a developer or a community asked me to act for them on a data centre I would do so, and do it properly for either. My interest here is narrower than that. I would like the argument, when it is had, to be had fairly: without jibes, without insults and without misinformation from either side.

A word about Brexit

It is a peculiar feature of Irish public life that a planning dispute can go from the technical to the tribal in about a week. The latest turn came on 24 October, when The Journal reported on an interview with Ronan Kelly, chief executive of the lobby group Digital Infrastructure Ireland. Those who stop data centres, he suggested, resemble the crowds who cheered the Brexit vote. The opposition, he said, is fuelled by disinformation that has blown across from American politics. The AI industry, he told the paper, is like water: it will always find its way, and if Ireland's grid is the obstacle, it will simply flow to the next country.

There is something in this, and it deserves to be said first. Investment does move, and it moves quickly. Mr Kelly also concedes that his own sector has been too secretive and is preparing materials to explain itself to the communities beside which it builds. He says that 107 Irish data centres already use closed-loop cooling, which, if true, bears directly on the water question. It is his figure, and it would be worth having it tested independently.

The difficulty lies in the other claim. The Journal's report offers no evidence that foreign money is stirring up Irish objectors, and it records that some 300 people had objected to the Kilmeaden proposal a year earlier, which is hard to put down to a rumour from Virginia. A Brexit comparison is a handy thing to reach for, since it tells the audience what to think of people before it has heard a word they say. It does not help the industry, and it does nothing for the people who will live next door to its buildings.

What the larger argument is about

The debate here is not happening in a vacuum. It sits inside a much bigger argument about technology, power and who gets to decide, and Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's work on what they call end times fascism, which I have read in detail, is one contribution to it. Their Guardian essay of September 2026 is adapted from their book of the same name. It is concerned with American politics and the tech billionaires. It does not mention Ireland, it touches on data centres only in passing, including the people who have defended their air and water against the sprawling ones, and it nowhere suggests that someone who supports a data centre is an extremist. Nobody should say so on its behalf.

What I take from it is a question that supporters and objectors can both ask, which is who gets the benefit and who is left with the bill. I want a better world, and in my book that means one in which people have a real say in what is built beside them, and in which the gains and the costs of progress are shared fairly.

The case for

The supporters have a real case, and it should be heard in full. The Government says that firms operating data centres here employ about 21,000 people directly, within an ICT sector of more than 180,000. Local authorities benefit as well. The Journal has estimated that councils collect around €62.5 million a year in commercial rates from data centres, about a fifth of South Dublin's rates income. The Maynooth geographer Patrick Bresnihan warned in the same piece that a deepening dependence on that money is risky, which is a fair thing to say and not an argument against the jobs.

Nor is it all bad news on the ground. In Tallaght, waste heat from an Amazon Web Services data centre now warms public buildings and a university, with affordable apartments to follow, through a not-for-profit utility owned by the council. The council estimates it saves more than 1,500 tonnes of carbon a year. Well designed, a nuisance can be turned into an asset.

The case against

Those who object have specific complaints, and the first is about the grid, where the figures are stark. The CSO says that data centres used 23 per cent of the country's metered electricity in 2025, up from 5 per cent in 2015. The SEAI, in Energy in Ireland 2026, puts the figure at 22.5 per cent and attributes 78 per cent of the net rise in electricity demand since 2015 to them, while recording that the European Commission puts data centres at roughly 3 per cent of demand across the Union. EirGrid says the greater Dublin region is now fully constrained for new connections, that the headroom is largely gone, and that a further six gigawatts of interest would double the peak on the system. One does not need an engineering degree to see why a householder, looking at a small island grid and a large industrial customer, begins to wonder about the bill.

Then there is what it feels like on the ground. Kildare County Council voted in September, by 22 to 11 with seven abstentions, against reviewing land zoned exclusively for data centres at Naas. Cllr Bill Clear, who had backed the zoning in 2021, said he had since learned that data centres were not all they were cracked up to be, having visited a site in Clondalkin where the noise and the smell had shocked him. Residents spoke of noise, air pollution and water.

In Kilmeaden, outside Waterford, more than 500 people objected to a campus covering more than a square kilometre. RTÉ reported three large ICT buildings, 16 gas turbines, and more than 300 people taking part in a slow-drive protest. The council refused permission earlier this month, citing traffic and the pressure on water and electricity. The developers had said that the scheme met regulatory guidelines and involved community consultation, and nothing in the reports suggests otherwise. But compliance is a low bar when you are a village of some 300 people being told, as one resident put it, to prepare for ten years of construction.

And in Killala, in Mayo, the council granted permission for a €1.5 billion scheme which An Coimisiún Pleanála then overturned on appeal, saying that the applicant had not shown consistency with the Climate Action Plan and had produced no evidence of a renewable power purchase agreement. The Irish Times found mixed feelings: relief in some quarters, and in another a Fine Gael councillor frustrated after more than seven years of work. One resident complained that developers put these things up "without explaining anything to the local people". That sentence could stand as a summary of most planning rows in the history of the State.

Elsewhere

None of this is peculiarly Irish. In Virginia, the Prince William Digital Gateway, a plan for 23 million square feet of data centres, ended in July after the courts found that the county had failed to follow its own public notice rules in rezoning the land. Whatever one thinks of the project, it died of a procedural failure, which is the most avoidable way for anything to die. In Tucson, the council rejected Project Blue unanimously in 2025, one member observing that giant corporations prefer to operate in the shadows. And across the 13 American states served by the PJM grid, the independent market monitor says data centres accounted for $6.3 billion of the $16.4 billion in the latest capacity auction charges, costs that find their way onto bills.

There are places that have found a middle road. Amsterdam paused new data centres in 2019 and then restarted growth in designated clusters, with caps on power and space. Singapore lifted its pause in 2022 but promised to be more selective in future.

What we have, and what we lack

Ireland is not starting from nothing, though it can sometimes look that way. The Government's 2022 statement on data centres still stands, and the regulator's December 2025 connection policy requires new data centres to bring matching generation or storage and to meet at least 80 per cent of their annual demand from additional Irish renewables. The same notice says that the regulator would prefer a State-led approach, with spatial planning and development targets. In January the Government published its Large Energy User Action Plan, a "plan-led" approach built around green energy parks beside renewable supply.

Last week, however, a Minister told the Dáil that none of the plan's 17 actions is yet complete. The plan names no sites, and the National Planning Statement that would set the criteria is promised only "before the end of this year". Nor does the plan prevent projects being proposed elsewhere. As far as can be found, there are no national planning guidelines dedicated to data centres, which leaves councils and An Coimisiún Pleanála to decide, case by case, what a plan ought to have settled beforehand. It is an old Irish habit to build the thing first and the policy afterwards.

A fair fight

There are two sides to this argument, and both are honest. The supporters see jobs, investment and the digital infrastructure that a modern economy needs. The objectors see a grid, a water supply and a landscape being committed to a single industry without their say. Neither side is helped by calling the other a conspiracy, a mob or a lobby.

The answer is not a ban, and it is not a free-for-all. It is what we have been slow to supply in so many areas, a system. That means national guidelines on siting, scale, noise, water and emissions, in place before the next application and not after it. It means development plans that say plainly where large energy users may go, tied to grid and renewable capacity, so that zoning land means what it says. It means binding standards on water use and heat reuse, with Tallaght as the benchmark. It means community benefit agreed at the start and not offered as an afterthought, and it means independent, published monitoring of power, water and noise once a facility is running.

With clear rules, developers get certainty, communities get a fair hearing, and the decisions can be argued on the facts. People rarely fight what they trust to have been well planned.

Further reading

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Planners Take, 28 October 2026

There is a particular kind of planning rule that exists mainly on paper. Since 2019, anyone letting a home for short stays in a rent pressure zone has generally needed planning permission to do so. Seven years on, the Department of Housing's own figures say that only about 1.3 per cent of short-term lets have ever applied. That is not a regulatory regime; it is an honour system that most of the people it covers have chosen to ignore. The Government's Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill is meant to change that, but one feature of it risks turning seven years of non-compliance into a qualification.

The broad shape of the proposal is sensible. Planning permission for short-term letting would be restricted in 25 areas with populations of more than 20,000, including Dublin, Cork and Limerick. A national register, run by Fáilte Ireland, would require hosts to sign up from 1 December, which for the first time would give councils a reliable picture of where these lets actually are. Anyone who has tried to run an enforcement case on a short-term let knows that the hardest part is often proving the use exists at all; a register goes a long way towards fixing that.

The difficulty lies in the draft national planning statement that sits alongside the Bill. For short-term lets that have been operating for seven years, regardless of where they are, it proposes a presumption in favour of granting permission, provided the property has been in continuous short-term use and has not been the subject of enforcement action. Hosts in areas with fewer than 20,000 people would also have two years to apply.

Seven years is not an arbitrary number to a planner. It echoes the period after which, under our existing law, a council generally loses the ability to bring enforcement proceedings against unauthorised development. Read in that light, the presumption looks less like a loophole and more like an attempt to be consistent with a principle that already runs through the system: after a certain time, the State accepts that the moment for enforcement has passed. There is also a fairness argument. Councils did not have the information or the resources to pursue these uses, and some operators will have invested in good faith on the strength of that inaction.

But the comparison does not hold up well. The seven-year enforcement limit was designed to give certainty about physical development, not to reward a commercial use that was unlawful from the first night it operated and that has a direct, measurable effect on housing supply. The condition that no enforcement action has been taken is close to meaningless when enforcement has been so thin on the ground. Threshold has put the point plainly: permission has always been a legal requirement, and those who operated outside it should not be rewarded with longer transition periods. Sinn Féin has gone further, arguing that the restrictions would be among the weakest anywhere in Europe or the United States.

The stakes are not trivial. Analysis by the Housing Agency, cited in the planning statement, suggests that almost 17,000 properties are being used entirely for short-term letting in areas of high housing demand, and that somewhere between 5,500 and 9,500 could return to long-term use. In a year when councils, the Department and the industry are arguing over every possible lever to increase supply, that is a significant number of homes that already exist, are already serviced and need no new planning permission to be lived in.

My own view is that the register and the restriction in the larger urban areas should be welcomed and brought in without delay. The presumption for long-standing lets, however, should be dropped or narrowed sharply, perhaps limited to lets in areas where there is no evidence of housing pressure. Seven years of non-compliance should be treated as a problem to be solved, not as a track record.

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Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 28 October 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering criticism of the Government's short-term letting proposals, 85 homes in Tralee cleared on appeal, more apartments for Waterford's North Quays, a new civic park for Sandyford, a housing refusal in Longford over wastewater capacity and a withdrawn apartment scheme in Waterford city.

Short-term letting proposals criticised as too weak

Threshold and Sinn Féin have criticised the Government's Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill, which would restrict planning permission for short-term lets in 25 areas with populations over 20,000, including Dublin, Cork and Limerick. Critics object to a draft national planning statement's presumption in favour of permission for lets that have operated continuously for seven years without enforcement action, and to a two-year window for hosts in smaller areas to apply for permission; a national register run by Fáilte Ireland is due to open on 1 December. The Department of Housing says only about 1.3% of short-term lets have applied for planning permission since it became a requirement, and that around 43.6% of those applications were approved.

Source: Irish Examiner (27 October 2026)

85 homes in Tralee granted on appeal

An Coimisiún Pleanála has granted permission on appeal for 85 homes and a crèche on a 3.3-hectare site at Caherslee, Mounthawk and Carrigeendaniel in Tralee, upholding Kerry County Council's grant of June 2026 despite local objections. The scheme is a mix of detached, semi-detached and terraced houses, duplexes and apartments, with access and a pedestrian and cycle path off Caherslee Road (R551) and a new wastewater pumping station.

Source: Irish Independent (28 October 2026)

Waterford's North Quays approved for 80 more apartments

Revised plans for six residential blocks at Waterford's North Quays regeneration scheme have been approved, raising the number of apartments in Blocks C to H from 350 to 430 while keeping the permitted footprints and heights of eight and nine storeys. One-bedroom units rise from 106 to 228, the 37 previously approved three-bedroom apartments are dropped, and ground-floor retail and commercial space is slightly reduced.

Source: Waterford News & Star (26 October 2026)

Councillors approve Sandyford civic park

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown councillors have approved the council's Part 8 proposal for a 0.96-hectare civic park on Corrig Road at the junction with Carmanhall Road in Sandyford, with 37 votes at the October meeting. Almost 60% of the 275 consultation submissions opposed the plan, mainly over the displacement of businesses and organisations from the site, and councillors were given assurances that efforts would be made to help tenants relocate within the Sandyford Business District.

Source: Irish Independent (27 October 2026)

Longford housing scheme refused over wastewater concerns

Longford County Council has refused permission for 30 houses at Silver Birches, Dunbeggan, Stonepark, which would have been reached through the existing estate's roads and connected to its foul sewer, surface water and water networks. Residents of the estate had opposed the plans over concerns about the capacity of the wastewater system; the decision issued on 20 October after further information was sought.

Source: Irish Independent (October 2026)

Keanes Road apartment plan withdrawn in Waterford

An application by Norris Real Estate Holdings Limited for 40 apartments at Tycor on Keanes Road in Waterford city was withdrawn on 27 October, according to council records. Residents of The Willows had objected to the proposed access through their cul-de-sac, citing traffic, road safety and the character of the estate; no reason for the withdrawal is given.

Source: WLR (27 October 2026)

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Tuesday, 27 October 2026

Planners Take, 27 October 2026

Zoning land for housing has never been the same thing as building homes on it. Every planner who has worked on a county development plan knows the gap between the two: the residential zoning that sits on a map for years, serviced or not, while the landowner waits, the builder cannot raise the money and the council's core strategy figures quietly fail to materialise. The Government's latest proposal is aimed squarely at one part of that gap, and it deserves a careful welcome.

Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris is due to bring a memo to Cabinet on Wednesday on a Bill to widen the remit of Home Building Finance Ireland, the State-backed lender to smaller builders. At present a builder can only borrow from HBFI once it has a site with planning permission. Under the proposal, HBFI would be able to lend for the purchase of land already zoned for residential use before permission is granted. Larger developers would not be able to use it. If approved, a general scheme will be published and sent for pre-legislative scrutiny, and there are suggestions the Government wants it passed quickly.

The case for the change rests on the structure of the industry. A report for HBFI found that more than nine in ten Irish home-builders deliver fewer than 50 homes a year, and that only 11 consistently deliver more than 300. That is a fragmented sector, and it is the small and medium firms that build the infill schemes, the edge-of-town estates and the village developments that make up much of what we see on weekly lists outside the cities. For those firms the hardest money to find is the earliest money: buying a site and carrying it through design, surveys, pre-application consultation and a planning process that can run for well over a year, all on their own capital. Easing that step should, in principle, bring more zoned land into active use.

From a planning perspective, there is a further benefit. A builder who owns its site outright can put more into the quality of its application. In my experience, many weak applications are weak because the applicant is trying to keep pre-planning costs to a minimum, skimping on ecology, drainage or design work that a council will inevitably ask for later by way of further information. Better-funded applicants tend to produce better-prepared files, and better-prepared files are decided faster.

There are reasonable objections. Lending against land without permission is riskier than lending against land with it, and the State is taking that risk. Zoned land is not always serviceable land, and no amount of finance will overcome a lack of water or wastewater capacity. There is also a danger that cheaper finance simply pushes up the price of zoned sites, transferring the benefit to landowners rather than to buyers. And it does nothing about the capacity of planning authorities themselves, which remain stretched, with the commencement of the remaining parts of the Planning and Development Act 2024 paused because of the work-to-rule.

None of these objections is a reason not to proceed, but they are reasons to design the scheme well. Lending should be tied to land that is genuinely serviceable or has a credible servicing plan, and drawdown should be linked to progress towards a planning application so that the measure activates land rather than funding speculation. HBFI and local authorities should share information so that councils know which zoned sites are moving.

My view is that this is a sensible, modest reform that addresses a real bottleneck. It will not on its own deliver the scale of housing the country needs, and the Government does not claim it will. But it treats small builders as the backbone of delivery that they are, and it recognises that the planning system works best when applicants arrive properly prepared.

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Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 27 October 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering proposed State loans for small builders to buy zoned land before planning permission, a 73-home mixed-use scheme in Clonlara, new homes permitted in Dundalk, a town-centre housing application in Clonmel, concern over the concentration of solar farms in mid-Waterford and a request for further information on the Oriel offshore wind farm.

Small builders could get State loans to buy zoned land before planning permission

Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris is to bring proposals to Cabinet on Wednesday that would allow Home Building Finance Ireland (HBFI) to lend small builders money to buy land already zoned for housing before planning permission is granted; at present HBFI finance is available only once a site has permission. Research for HBFI found that more than 90% of home-builders deliver fewer than 50 homes a year, and only 11 consistently deliver more than 300. If approved, a general scheme of the Bill will be published and sent for pre-legislative scrutiny.

Source: The Irish Times (27 October 2026)

73-home mixed-use scheme proposed in Clonlara, Co Clare

Plans have been lodged with Clare County Council for a mixed-use development of 73 homes in the village of Clonlara, made up of 67 houses and six first-floor apartments, together with three commercial units including a shop and a new paved plaza. The 4.13-hectare application, received on 20 October and accompanied by a Natura Impact Statement, also provides for land to be prepared for a public park and playground for the local authority. Observations can be made until 23 November, with a decision due by 14 December.

Source: Irish Independent (27 October 2026)

46 homes permitted on the Long Avenue, Dundalk

Louth County Council has granted Pangreen Limited permission, subject to 16 conditions, for 46 homes in a three- to four-storey development at the corner of The Long Avenue and Tom Bellew Avenue in Dundalk. The scheme is a mix of apartments and duplexes, with 47 parking spaces, a new cycle lane on Tom Bellew Avenue and pedestrian links. The application included a masterplan for the wider lands to the north, where a discount foodstore has previously been permitted.

Source: Louth Live (26 October 2026)

Permission sought for 45 homes in Clonmel town centre

Ormonde Homes Ltd has lodged an application with Tipperary County Council for 27 houses and 18 apartments on a 2.09-hectare site off Davis Road, behind Lidl in Clonmel, the first phase of a scheme that would eventually bring 99 homes to the area. Nine of the units would be social housing, and an archaeological exclusion zone has been built into the layout following site investigations. A second phase is expected to be lodged in the coming weeks.

Source: Tipperary Live (26 October 2026)

Councillors question scale of solar farm applications in mid-Waterford

Councillors in the Comeragh area of Co Waterford have raised concerns about the number of large solar farm applications on agricultural land around Clonea-Power, Stradbally, Portlaw and Kilmeaden. A senior planner at Waterford City and County Council said that, in the absence of national guidelines, each application has to be assessed on its own merits, and that the council has long called for such guidelines. One councillor intends to table a motion seeking a pause on further data centre permissions in the county pending a national assessment of their impacts.

Source: Waterford News & Star (26 October 2026)

Further information sought on Oriel offshore wind farm

An Coimisiún Pleanála issued a further-information request on 13 October on the planning application for the proposed 375MW Oriel offshore wind farm off Co Louth, covering matters including marine archaeology at the Dunany Point landfall, tourism impacts and bat surveys. The developer has until 14 January 2027 to respond, and consideration of the application is paused in the meantime. Separately, Oriel Windfarm Limited has applied to the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority to extend its route-to-market deadline to the end of 2028.

Source: Afloat (24 October 2026)

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Monday, 26 October 2026

Planners Take, 26 October 2026

Ireland's planning system has spent two years in a strange half-state, governed partly by the law it is leaving behind and partly by the one it is moving towards. That limbo has just been extended. The Department of Housing has confirmed that further commencement of the Planning and Development Act 2024 is on hold, with 24 parts of the Act still to be switched on, because of the work-to-rule by council staff. The Department describes the delay as being due to circumstances beyond its control and says it will name a new date as soon as it can.

Some context is useful. The 2024 Act was sold as the biggest reform of planning law in a generation. It brought decades of amendments into a single statute, turned An Bord Pleanála into An Coimisiún Pleanála, introduced mandatory timelines for decisions and reformed the rules on judicial review. It has been brought in piece by piece since then, which was always going to be awkward, but the expectation across the profession was that the remaining parts would follow in an orderly way. The pause comes after Fórsa instructed members working in local authorities to withdraw cooperation from any restructuring and from new or changed work practices, following the breakdown of pay talks over the summer. Strike action planned for last Wednesday was suspended after fresh talks at the Workplace Relations Commission, but the work-to-rule remains.

Why should this matter beyond the circle of planners and lawyers who follow commencement orders? Because a planning system is, above all, a set of procedures that people rely on to be predictable. An applicant preparing a large housing scheme needs to know which timelines, which appeal rules and which forms will apply when the application is lodged, and again when it reaches a decision. A community group considering an objection or a legal challenge needs the same certainty. When parts of a new code are live and others are not, every planning department and every consultant has to keep two rulebooks open, and the risk of procedural error rises. In a system where judicial review is already a familiar feature of major projects, procedural uncertainty is not a small thing.

There is a fair argument on the other side. Commencing new procedures means new forms, new software, new public notices and retrained staff, and that is precisely the sort of change in work practices a work-to-rule is designed to withhold. Bringing provisions into force in council offices that are not cooperating with the changes would risk a messier transition than a short delay. The Department says it is keeping the councils and the commission in an advanced state of readiness, and if the dispute is settled quickly, little lasting harm may be done. Workers are entitled to press their case, and the Government cannot reasonably expect councils to absorb a major legal overhaul while the pay question is unresolved.

Still, the episode exposes a weakness in how we reform planning. The Act was drafted with ambition, but its delivery depends on local authority planning departments that have been stretched for years, and the transition has been designed as a long series of separate commencement decisions rather than one clear switchover. That spreads the work out, but it also leaves the reform exposed to any interruption, whether industrial, technical or political.

My view is that the delay itself is less damaging than the uncertainty around it. The Department should publish a clear, dated sequence for the remaining 24 parts as soon as the dispute allows, and give planning authorities and practitioners a reasonable lead-in before each one takes effect. It should also make sure that transitional arrangements for applications and appeals already in the system are spelt out plainly. Planning reform was meant to make the system faster and more certain. A reform stuck halfway does the opposite, and the sooner it is finished, the better for applicants, communities and councils alike.

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Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 26 October 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering a pause in commencing the Planning and Development Act, a reported curb on new homes from leading housing providers, a 70-home scheme at a protected former convent in Donnybrook, a large housing application near Blarney, a third-party appeal against 174 homes in Portlaoise and planning enforcement on O'Connell Street.

Work-to-rule pauses commencement of the Planning and Development Act

Further commencement of the Planning and Development Act 2024 has been paused because of the work-to-rule by council staff, with 24 parts of the Act still to be brought into force. The Department of Housing confirmed the pause is due to “circumstances beyond its control”, after Fórsa told members in local authorities to withdraw cooperation from restructuring and new work practices. The Department says it will keep working with planning authorities and An Coimisiún Pleanála to stay ready, and will give a new commencement date as soon as possible.

Source: Irish Examiner (26 October 2026)

Housing providers reportedly told to limit number of new homes

The Irish Independent reports that providers of thousands of new homes have been quietly told by the Government to stop building more houses and apartments. Sinn Féin has described the directive as “ludicrous”, amid fears that middle earners will be hit hardest.

Source: Irish Independent (25 October 2026)

70 homes proposed at former Dominican convent in Donnybrook

Muckross Park Developments has applied to Dublin City Council for up to 70 homes on the former Dominican convent and chapel site at Marlborough Road, Donnybrook, beside Muckross Park College. The plans include a new five-storey block of 29 apartments, partial demolition and refurbishment of Muckross Park House, a protected structure, for 25 apartments, conversion of the former chapel into 10 apartments and six houses in the walled garden. The site was sold by the Dominican Sisters for a total of €8.4 million in 2021.

Source: The Irish Times (26 October 2026)

Kilmoney Homes seeks permission for 319 homes near Blarney

Kilmoney Homes Ltd has applied to Cork City Council for a large-scale residential development of 319 homes on a 10.6-hectare site at Dromasmole, about 2.5km from Tower, made up of 237 houses and 82 duplex and simplex units, with a two-storey childcare facility for up to 110 children. Access would be from a new entrance on the Bawnafinny Road. Submissions are accepted until 19 November, with a decision due by 10 December.

Source: The Echo (25 October 2026)

Appeal lodged against 174 homes at Dargan Woods, Portlaoise

A Forest Park resident has appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála against Laois County Council's grant of permission for 160 houses, 14 apartments and a 67-place crèche extending the Dargan Woods estate off the Borris Road in Portlaoise. The appeal targets a proposed pedestrian and cycle link next to Forest Park, raising noise, environmental and anti-social behaviour concerns; the council had granted permission with 26 conditions after finding the developer's justification for the links acceptable.

Source: Laois Live (25 October 2026)

Planning enforcement steps up on O'Connell Street

Dublin City Council has taken more than a dozen planning enforcement cases over unauthorised shopfronts and advertising on O'Connell Street, following complaints from the new Dublin City Development Company led by Robert Watt, and a new restaurant on the street has been permitted on condition that it has no takeaway element. In an editorial, The Irish Times welcomed the moves as early signs of revival but said investment around the former Hammerson site, MetroLink and the GPO must be brought together in a coherent plan.

Source: The Irish Times (editorial) (25 October 2026)

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