Assess planning & policy

Know why applications get refused, not just that they were

Planning decisions & refusal reasons

203,449 planning applications from all 31 planning authorities on one map — with the council's own reasoning extracted from 16,687 refusals.

applications, all 31 authorities
203,449
applications, all 31 authorities
refusals with reasoning — 92% of refusals
16,687
refusals with reasoning — 92% of refusals
An Bord Pleanála appeals linked
8,377
An Bord Pleanála appeals linked

Find the refusal two doors down

Every decision, on the map

Pins coloured granted, refused, split or no decision. Councils record decisions in 176 different wordings; every one is sorted into those four so a grant never shows as a refusal.

The nearest decisions to any site

Click a site and see the ten nearest decisions within 5km, ranked by distance — measured, not estimated.

Refusals grouped by theme

Filter the map to the reasons that matter to your scheme, from rural housing need, traffic & access, visual & landscape to flood risk and design.

The reasoning no register publishes

Registers say that an application was refused. The reasons sit in scanned decision documents most people never open.

The council's own words

The core reason for refusal, taken from the decision document, on every refused application we could read.

The policies it cited

The development plan sections the council relied on, so you can read the policy a scheme failed against.

Appeals, linked

8,377 applications carry their An Bord Pleanála appeal reference, joined to the original decision.

Check it before you rely on it

A public page for every application

Free to read, no account, and linked to the council’s own file wherever the council publishes one — so you can check an extraction against its source.

Look up any application

Search by reference number or address, across every council or one.

Refusal themes

Every analysed refusal is grouped into themes a planner would recognise. The list comes from the refusals themselves, not from a template.

  • Rural housing need
  • Traffic & access
  • Visual & landscape
  • Ecology & heritage
  • Wastewater & services
  • Height, scale & density
  • Residential amenity
  • Extension of duration
  • Flood risk
  • Zoning & land use
  • Design & layout
  • Other

What it can’t tell you

Knowing where the data runs out is part of using it. Here is where this does.

  • The register we hold begins in 2021, so "no application here" means none in about five years — not never developed.
  • Reasoning is extracted for 92% of refusals. Donegal's decision documents cannot be reached, and some councils have not yet scanned recent ones.
  • The reasoning is extracted from council documents by an AI language model and can be wrong. Where the council publishes the file, the case page links to it — check anything you rely on.
  • Planning data was last refreshed on 7 September 2026.

Planning decisions & refusal reasons: questions

Where can I see why a planning application in Ireland was refused?

In the council’s decision document, which most registers only link to as a scan. Precedent extracts the core reason and the development plan policies cited from 16,687 refused applications, and shows them on each application’s public page — free to read, no account needed.

Which planning authorities are covered?

All 31 planning authorities in Ireland, from the national planning applications register. The register we hold begins in 2021.

How accurate is the refusal reasoning?

It is extracted from council documents by an AI language model and can be wrong. Where the council publishes the file, the application’s page links to it, so you can check the extraction against its source.

Built on official public registries

National planning applications register
All 31 planning authorities
Council decision documents
The source of the refusal reasoning
An Bord Pleanála
Appeal references

See it on your own patch

A short call with the founder, on real sites in the county you work in. About twenty minutes — you will know by the end whether it is any use to you.