Ireland is about to widen exempted development but the current Section 5 system can't even count itself

TL;DR

• The Government has approved, and intends to lay under the Planning and Development Act 2024, regulations that significantly expand exempted development (modular back-garden homes up to 45 m², larger extensions, attic conversions including rooflights, subdivision and STL reversion). Positive resolutions by both Houses of the Oireachtas are required before signing. The existing Section 5 declaration system cannot reliably tell us how many such decisions Ireland already makes each year.
• Across the 31 local authorities, Section 5 publication is fragmented and inconsistently labelled. A clear discrete, discoverable Section 5 register exists at SDCC, Cork City, Cork County, Meath, Kildare, Waterford, Longford, Donegal and Tipperary. At several other authorities Section 5 declarations are merged into the main planning register without a distinct prefix, and at others no separate searchable register was located in our spot survey.
• Without a clean baseline, neither Government, nor the OPR, nor planning lawyers, nor automated decision-support tools can empirically measure the impact of the 2026 expansion, and judicial review exposure (253 new JRs against An Coimisiún Pleanála in the 18 months to June 2025, broken down by Fine Gael TD Colm Burke as 147 in 2024 and 106 in H1 2025) makes this data gap a live operational risk.

Key Findings

• The 2026 expansion is real, advanced and contested. On 21 April 2026, Cabinet approved a memo from Minister for Housing James Browne TD and Minister of State for Planning John Cummins TD providing for planning exemption of modular back-garden units up to 45 m², extensions up to 45 m² (up from 40 m²), subdivision, attic conversions including rooflights, front- and rear-garden bicycle and bin storage, and Rent-a-Room treatment of the new modular units. Regulations are to be laid under the Planning and Development Act 2024 and require positive resolutions by both Houses of the Oireachtas before signature.
• The legal architecture is mid-transition. PDA 2024 (signed 17 October 2024) is being commenced in phases through SI orders (S.I. No. 662 of 2024, then a sequence of five Commencement Orders made in 2025, culminating in S.I. No. 633 of 2025 on 31 December 2025); An Bord Pleanála was replaced by An Coimisiún Pleanála on 18 June 2025 under Part 17 of the Act, brought into effect by S.I. No. 256 of 2025; exempted development under PDA 2024 will be defined entirely in regulations rather than on the face of the Act.
• The Section 5 mechanism is substantively unchanged for now. An €80 declaration is sought from the planning authority (4-week decision target); a refused or contested declaration may be referred to An Coimisiún Pleanála (formerly An Bord Pleanála) on payment of a fee (€210); documents must be displayed online for at least 8 weeks under s.5(7B) PDA 2000. The replacement procedure in section 10 of PDA 2024 narrows applicant standing to a "relevant person" (owner; eligible maritime applicant under s.85(2); occupier with owner's consent; another person with owner's consent; qualifying environmental NGO meeting five criteria; prescribed person) or a statutory undertaker.
• The published national data is fragmentary. An Coimisiún Pleanála's annual reports do not isolate Section 5 referrals. The 2021 and 2022 Appendices report 118 and 105 "Referrals" received respectively, but the figure is folded back into a generic "Other Case Types" line (944 received and 887 disposed in 2023; 463 received and 606 disposed in 2024, both confirmed from the 2024 Annual Report). There is no national, time-series count of Section 5 outcomes.
• 31 LA practice varies enormously. SDCC publishes every Section 5 declaration on its planning portal using an "ED…" prefix (the OPR's August 2024 review confirms the website meets s.5(7B) by holding declarations beyond the eight-week minimum). Cork City uses "R…-yy"; Cork County uses "D…yy"; Meath uses hybrid prefixes "RS/LS/TS/PS" (format confirmed; mapping to municipal districts not explicitly stated by the council); Kildare uses "ED 1234"; Donegal and Tipperary each publish a dedicated Section 5 page; DCC's online presentation conflates exempted-development files into the standard planning register without a distinct prefix; for several other LAs no discrete discoverable Section 5 register was located in our spot survey.
• The political and professional reaction is sharp. Labour leader Ivana Bacik called the units "shed-sits"; Labour housing spokesperson Conor Sheehan TD warned of "a shadow rental market with no protections for tenants"; Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns TD said the proposal risked throwing renters "to the wolves" and amounted to "a return to tenement conditions"; the Irish Planning Institute, while not opposing the principle, has accused Government of "tinkering" with planning regulations and called for the draft guidelines to be published.
• The data-quality problem matters for JR and enforcement. Fine Gael TD Colm Burke obtained figures showing 253 JRs against An Coimisiún Pleanála in the 18 months to June 2025 (147 commencing in 2024, 106 in the first six months of 2025), versus a prior four-year average that, per Burke, "was less than 100 per annum, approximately eight per month". The Irish Times (1 December 2025) reported legal costs to be capped at "just under €41,000 for a standard case up to the end of a first instance hearing in the High Court", with €53,350 for complex and €65,800 for very complex JRs. Poor classification of Section 5 outcomes amplifies this exposure.

Details

1. The statutory and regulatory spine of Section 5

Section 5 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 (No. 30 of 2000) provides that any person may, on payment of the prescribed fee, request in writing from the relevant planning authority a declaration as to whether a particular development is or is not development, or is or is not exempted development. The planning authority must issue the declaration within four weeks (subject to extensions where further information is sought); a person dissatisfied may, within four weeks of the declaration, refer the question to An Coimisiún Pleanála (formerly An Bord Pleanála) for review under s.5(3) PDA 2000. The planning authority itself may refer (s.5(4)). Subsection 5(7B), inserted by later amendment, requires the documents to be placed on the authority's or the Board's website for a minimum period of eight weeks from the date of the issue of the declaration.

The class catalogue of exempted development sits in Schedule 2 of the Planning and Development Regulations 2001 (S.I. No. 600 of 2001): Part 1 — Exempted Development (General); Part 2 — Exempted Development (Advertisements); Part 3 — Exempted Development (Rural areas); Part 4 — Classes of Use (change-of-use exemptions). Conditions and limitations for each class sit in column 2 of the relevant Part rather than in a separate Part. Article 9, headed "Restrictions on exemption", lists twelve specific de-exempting circumstances under Article 9(1)(a) (contravention of, or inconsistency with a use specified in, a planning permission; formation/widening of access to a road with carriageway over 4 m; traffic hazard; building over the building line; works under a public road; interference with landscape/views of special amenity value; archaeological, geological, historical, scientific or ecological interference; works to an unauthorised structure or unauthorised use; demolition that would preclude an existing use objective; fencing/enclosure of land in habitual public recreational use; obstruction of a public right of way; ACA exterior works that would materially affect the area's character), plus restrictions for Special Amenity Area Orders (9(1)(b)), EIA-required development (9(1)(c)), and major-accident-hazard establishments (9(1)(d)). Protected-structure restrictions sit separately in section 57 PDA 2000 and Article 6(2)(b)(iii) of the Regulations.

The chronology of subsequent amendments is dense. Material instruments include:

• S.I. No. 83/2007 — first wave of post-2000 adjustments to the 2001 Regulations.
• S.I. No. 235/2008 — broader exemption recalibration.
• S.I. No. 599/2014 — short-term letting adjustments.
• S.I. No. 30/2018 — vacant commercial-to-residential change-of-use exemption (Article 10(6) of the 2001 Regulations), Rebuilding Ireland-driven.
• S.I. No. 235/2019 — Planning and Development Act 2000 (Exempted Development) (No. 2) Regulations 2019 (operational 1 July 2019), introducing the rent-pressure-zone short-term letting regime alongside s.38 of the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2019.
• S.I. No. 75/2022 — extended the 2018 vacant commercial-to-residential exemption to 31 December 2025 and added Class 12 (former public houses).
• S.I. No. 492/2022 — Planning and Development (Solar Safeguarding Zone) Regulations 2022, fixing 43 Solar Safeguarding Zones.
• S.I. No. 493/2022 — Planning and Development Act 2000 (Exempted Development) (No. 3) Regulations 2022, removing the 12 m²/50% roof cap on rooftop domestic solar, with effect 5 October 2022.
• S.I. No. 376/2023 — Planning and Development (Exempted Development) (No. 4) Regulations 2023, change-of-use exemptions for International Protection accommodation.
• 2025 Regulations — Planning and Development (Exempted Development (Act of 2000)) Regulations 2025 (agriculture: stand-alone slurry storage up to 1,000 m³ per structure exempt subject to a 1,500 m³ farm aggregate; animal housing increased 200→300 m² and 300→450 m²) and the (No. 2) Regulations 2025 extending the vacant-commercial-to-residential exemption to 31 December 2028. Up to the end of 2024, local authorities nationally received 1,457 notifications covering 3,429 units under the vacant-to-residential exemption (Department of Housing, reply to Heneghan PQ 43828/25, 29 July 2025).

2. The Planning and Development Act 2024 and its phased commencement

PDA 2024 (No. 34 of 2024) was signed by President Higgins on 17 October 2024. Unlike PDA 2000, the new Act does not itself enumerate exempted development; all exemption classes are to be prescribed by separate regulations. The Government's PDA 2024 Implementation Plan (March 2025) sets out a review of all 100+ regulations made under PDA 2000 (≈1,200 pages of regulation), with exempted development singled out as "a small number of areas for which major revision of existing regulations or entirely new regulations are required".

Commencement has been phased: the first commencement order, S.I. No. 662 of 2024 (2 December 2024), was followed by S.I. Nos. 239, 256, 379, 452 and 633 of 2025, culminating on 31 December 2025. Part 17 (re-naming An Bord Pleanála as An Coimisiún Pleanála) was commenced on 18 June 2025 by S.I. No. 256 of 2025 (Planning and Development Act 2024 (Commencement) (No. 2) Order 2025, sealed 17 June 2025). Section 180 and Chapter 1 of Part 9 (judicial review) were commenced on 1 August 2025 by S.I. No. 379 of 2025. PDA 2024 reforms the Section 5 procedure: the replacement provision sits at section 10 of the 2024 Act (headed "Declaration on development, exempted development, etc.") and confines standing to a "relevant person" or a statutory undertaker. Under section 10(1), "relevant person" means: (a) the owner of the land; (b) a person eligible to apply for maritime development permission under section 85(2); (c) the occupier of the land who carries out (or proposes to carry out) the act or operation, or makes (or proposes to make) the change of use, with the owner's consent; (d) any other person doing so with the owner's consent; (e) a qualifying environmental NGO (a registered Irish company at least one year old, with environmental-protection objects in its constitution that it has pursued for at least one year, with at least ten members, and which has passed a prior authorising resolution); or (f) a prescribed person. The procedure can also now be used to confirm whether particular works fall within an existing permission — a useful expansion noted by Matheson's planning team.

3. The April 2026 Cabinet memo and the residential exemption expansion

On 21 April 2026, Cabinet approved the "Exempted Development Regulations for Residential Dwellings" memo brought jointly by Minister Browne and Minister of State Cummins. Conditions include:

• Owner-occupier must reside in the principal dwelling.
• Detached modular unit up to 45 m² to the rear, with a separate entrance and a minimum distance from the main house.
• At least 25 m² of garden must remain.
• Compliance with the Building Regulations is required.
• Rent-a-Room scheme (€14,000 tax-free annual rental income) extended to such units, to be operationalised by Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris TD in the Budgetary process.
• Larger extensions (up to 45 m²), subdivision, attic conversions including rooflights, bicycle/bin storage exemptions (four adult bicycles or three wheelie bins; front and rear).

Minister Browne (21 April 2026): "Since taking up my responsibilities as Minister for Housing, I have been laser focused on cutting red tape, reducing bureaucracy and streamlining systems to get Ireland building better and faster… we are making the system easier for citizens while freeing up planning resources for more complex priorities."

Minister Cummins (21 April 2026): "As Minister of State for Planning, my priority has always been to remove things from the planning system that don't need to be there. I have already introduced Agriculture exemptions, and now I am bringing forward these residential exemptions, which will give people autonomy over making small changes to their homes without needing planning permission."

The April 2026 memo follows a four-week public consultation that closed on 26 August 2025 with 922 submissions; "Over half of submissions by the public, of which are predominantly supportive, relate to the proposal to exempt modular-style homes up to 45sq/m to the rear of the dwelling" (Department of Housing press release, "Progress towards Exempted Development Regulations"). Regulations require positive resolutions by both Houses of the Oireachtas before signing; as at May 2026 they have not yet been laid.

Revenue confirmed in May 2026 that a modular home built on the grounds of an existing dwelling will be liable for Local Property Tax in its own right where the structure is "permanent in nature and suitable for use as a separate dwelling in its own right" (Revenue statement to Ipav CEO Genevieve McGuirk, reported by RTÉ News, 13 May 2026; Irish Times, 13 May 2026). Section 2A of the LPT Act defines "residential property" as "any building which is in use as, or is suitable for use as, a dwelling" and excludes structures "not permanently attached to the ground".

4. The data-fragmentation problem

(a) National aggregation. There is no centralised national database of Section 5 declarations. The LGMA-led ePlanning portal (planning.localgov.ie / eplanning.ie) built by Annertech and recognised at the 16 October 2025 Public Sector Digital Transformation Awards in the Round Room at the Mansion House (winning "Most Collaborative Public Sector Project"; Annertech press release, 21 October 2025) as a "massive, six-year project" bringing together "central government departments and 30 local authorities", does not, at the time of writing, provide a single classified, downloadable national Section 5 dataset. The CSO Planning Permissions Background Notes state that the series "only provides coverage where development is subject to the requirement to obtain planning permission" — since exempted development is by statutory definition not subject to that requirement, it falls outside the CSO statistic. MyPlan.ie publishes GIS zoning and policy data but not Section 5 outcomes.

(b) An Coimisiún Pleanála's referral statistics. ACP/ABP annual reports do not isolate Section 5 referrals as their own line. The 2021 Annual Report Appendices record 118 "Referrals" received that year; the 2022 Appendices record 105. The 2024 Annual Report reports "Other Case Types" with 944 received / 887 disposed in 2023 and 463 received / 606 disposed in 2024 — a broader category that subsumes Section 5 referrals along with s.34 and s.254 referrals and other miscellaneous case types. A clean year-by-year Section 5-only series cannot be assembled from current open data and the absence is itself a publishable finding.

(c) Local authority publication practice. A spot survey of all 31 LAs reveals stark inconsistency:

| Local Authority | Discrete Section 5 register published? | Reference convention | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Dublin City Council | No — declarations merged into main planning register | No dedicated S5 prefix surfaced | Single largest LA caseload; EirePlan's internal classification flags misclassification | | Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown | No discrete register confirmed | Generic | EirePlan flags conflation between Section 5 and other declaration types | | South Dublin | Yes — every S5 declaration available on the planning portal | "ED…" prefix (e.g. ED20/0021) | OPR review (August 2024) confirms compliance with s.5(7B) | | Fingal | No discrete register confirmed | Generic | | | Cork City | Yes — published list | "R…-yy" (e.g. R1038-26) | List view; no advanced filter | | Cork County | Yes — "Exempted Development Applications and Decisions" register | "D…yy" (e.g. D246.23) | Status field "Exempt"/"Not Exempt" | | Galway City | No discrete register confirmed | Generic | OPR review subject (2022) | | Galway County | No discrete register confirmed | Generic | OPR review subject (2026) | | Limerick City & County | No discrete register confirmed | Generic | | | Waterford City & County | Yes — published "Section 5 Register" | "Exempted Developments" list | Explicit register page | | Kildare | Yes — Section 5 / SI 30 lists | "ED 1234" (e.g. ED 1243; combined references like EDSI30-001-2023 also appear) | | | Meath | Yes — "Section 5 Declarations Issued" page | Hybrid prefixes "RS/LS/TS/PS" (e.g. RS526035); mapping to municipal districts not explicitly stated by council | | | Longford | Yes — Section 5 Declarations list | Generic | | | Donegal | Yes — dedicated "Section 5 Declarations" page | Generic | | | Tipperary | Yes — dedicated Section 5 page on the Planning Exemption Certificate route | Generic | | | Wicklow, Wexford, Kerry, Clare, Mayo, Sligo, Louth, Cavan, Monaghan | No discoverable discrete register at the time of writing | Generic | Absence not confirmed via AIE/FOI |

EirePlan's internal estimate, that roughly 1,400 Section 5 cases are surface-discoverable nationally on public planning portals against a plausible true population of 15,000–25,000 since 2000, is consistent with this fragmented picture. We cannot fully verify the precise EirePlan figures from public sources (they require systematic scraping and de-duplication across 31 portals), but the OPR's published reviews and direct inspection of council websites confirm the underlying pattern: the public Section 5 record is partial, inconsistently labelled, and not nationally aggregated.

(d) The OPR's published reviews. None of the published OPR section-31AS reviews to date contains a dedicated thematic chapter on Section 5 register practice. But several touch on directly adjacent issues:

• SDCC review (August 2024): "All Section 5 declarations issued since 2006 are available on the Council's website, meeting the requirements of section 5(7B) of the Act (that Section 5 declarations and associated documents should be available on an authority's website for inspection for a minimum period of eight weeks)."
• Meath review (May 2024): comments on the council's publication and weekly-list practice.
• Roscommon review (March 2025): comments on register transparency.
• Waterford review (September 2023): comments on GIS publication.

5. Section 5 in the case law

A Section 5 declaration is not a development consent; it is a determination, made on the facts before the planning authority, of whether a particular activity constitutes development or qualifies as exempted development under Part I of the PDA 2000 (per the Court of Appeal in Narconon Trust v An Bord Pleanála [2021] IECA 307). The Court of Appeal in Narconon held that where a planning authority has issued an unappealed Section 5 declaration, ABP/ACP cannot effectively re-decide the same question on the same facts via a subsequent referral. In the same case Collins J observed that the proceedings "highlight significant deficiencies in the section 5 procedure", noting the four-week window, the absence of public participation, and the inadequacy of JR as a substitute for hearing rights.

6. Why the data gap matters for the 2026 expansion

The Government's stated objective in expanding exempted development is to "free up planning resources for more complex priorities" and accelerate small-scale residential delivery. That is a plausible aim. But the policy bet depends on at least five empirical assumptions which the current Section 5 data cannot test:

1. Baseline volumes. How many Section 5 declarations Ireland already issues each year, by class of works? Without a clean national series, the Department of Housing cannot calibrate the regulatory dose of exemption, particularly the substitution effect between Section 5 declarations and the new "no-declaration-needed" regime.
2. Compliance. How often do works claimed to be exempt prove not to be on inspection? The Section 5 declaration is voluntary; many homeowners proceed without one. Local authority enforcement units sit on data that is not centrally collated. The Planner (16 May 2025) reported Wexford County Council alone had 415 live alleged-breach investigations at end-2024.
3. Substitution effects. The SDCC finding above, that Section 5 is increasingly being used in place of Section 57 declarations for protected structures, illustrates the behavioural shifts that go undetected without proper classification.
4. Regional take-up. Without a comparable register, there is no way to measure differential uptake of the new 45 m² exemption across rural vs urban LAs, or to detect concentration risks (e.g., overlooked-garden disputes in Dublin terraces vs detached rural sites).
5. JR and enforcement defence. With 253 new JRs against ACP in the 18 months to June 2025 (Fine Gael TD Colm Burke, citing figures obtained directly from An Coimisiún Pleanála and reported in The Irish Times on 1 December 2025: 147 commencing in 2024 and 106 in the first six months of 2025, "17 cases per month since the start of 2025") and JR costs proposed to be capped at "just under €41,000 for a standard case", €53,350 for complex cases and €65,800 for very complex cases (Irish Times, 1 December 2025; Irish Examiner, 1 March 2026), the cost of poor record-keeping is no longer hypothetical.

Implication for AI and decision-support tools. Any automated reasoning over Irish exempted-development questions must train on or be evaluated against a corpus of historical Section 5 declarations. Where that corpus is incomplete (ACP's referrals not separable from "Other Case Types"), inconsistently classified (DCC, DLR), and partially unpublished (several of the 31 LAs), the ceiling on assistive accuracy is set by the data, not the model. A widening exemption regime built on top of an under-documented baseline compounds this risk.

7. Comparative context: what good publication looks like

The contrast with other Irish public registers is striking. The Planning Application Register on the LGMA platform (planning.localgov.ie), the National Planning Application Database (housinggovie ArcGIS), MyPlan.ie's GIS zoning viewer, the Companies Registration Office, the Land Registry, and the Property Price Register all offer national, searchable, downloadable datasets. Section 5 declarations, the most legally consequential form of exempt-development determination, sit outside this paradigm. The statutory minimum under s.5(7B) PDA 2000 (eight weeks online display) appears in practice to function as a maximum in many LAs.

Caveats

• EirePlan's internal figures. EirePlan's estimate of ~1,400 publicly discoverable Section 5 cases against a true population of 15,000–25,000 is not independently verifiable from public sources. We have reproduced the underlying fragmentation pattern from OPR reviews and direct inspection of LA portals, but readers should treat the precise figures as EirePlan's internal analysis rather than as a State-published statistic.
• ACP referral series. "Referrals" in ACP/ABP appendices include Section 5 referrals but also Section 34, Section 254 and other referrals. A discrete Section 5-only series is unavailable in current open data; the 2021 and 2022 appendices are the only years where a "Referrals" line is broken out at all, and from 2023 onward the figure is folded into "Other Case Types".
• 31-LA matrix. For several of the LAs listed in the final row of the table, absence of a discoverable register is not the same as absence of publication. The journalist may wish to issue AIE/FOI requests to those authorities to confirm. The position is dynamic — Donegal and Tipperary, which earlier iterations of this work had listed as missing, in fact maintain dedicated Section 5 pages.
• Quotes and dates. Ministerial and opposition quotes are taken from primary sources (gov.ie, RTÉ, Irish Times, party press statements). PDA 2024 commencement order numbers have been verified against the Irish Statute Book revised Acts edition (lawreform.ie).
• Modular policy is still pre-legislative. The exempted-development regulations have not yet been laid; the 21 April 2026 Cabinet decision approves the policy memo. Both Houses of the Oireachtas must pass positive resolutions before the regulations can be signed (Department of Housing, "Progress towards Exempted Development Regulations"). All references to the 45 m² exemption being "in force" should therefore be qualified as proposed.
• OPR reviews on Section 5 are indirect. None of the published OPR review reports contains a stand-alone thematic chapter on Section 5; the quotes used in this dossier are the closest published findings on register transparency, GIS publication, weekly-list publication, and the substitution of Section 5 for Section 57. A thematic OPR review on Section 5 specifically would close the most important evidentiary gap.

Sources

Primary legislation and statutory instruments

• Planning and Development Act 2000 (revised), Law Reform Commission — https://revisedacts.lawreform.ie/eli/2000/act/30/section/5/revised/en/html
• Planning and Development Act 2024 (revised), Law Reform Commission — https://revisedacts.lawreform.ie/eli/2024/act/34/revised/en/html
• S.I. No. 600/2001 — Planning and Development Regulations 2001
• S.I. No. 75/2022 — Planning and Development Act (Exempted Development) Regulations 2022
• S.I. No. 493/2022 — Planning and Development Act 2000 (Exempted Development) (No. 3) Regulations 2022
• S.I. No. 662/2024 — PDA 2024 (Commencement) Order 2024 (first commencement order)
• S.I. No. 256/2025 — PDA 2024 (Commencement) (No. 2) Order 2025 (Part 17 / An Coimisiún Pleanála) — sealed 17 June 2025, commenced Part 17 on 18 June 2025
• S.I. No. 379/2025 — PDA 2024 (Commencement) (No. 3) Order 2025 (Chapter 1 of Part 9, judicial review)
• S.I. No. 452/2025 — PDA 2024 (Commencement) (No. 4) Order 2025
• S.I. No. 633/2025 — PDA 2024 (Commencement) (No. 5) Order 2025
• Department of Housing — Solar Planning Exemptions — https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/publications/solar-planning-exemptions/
• Department of Housing — Regulations on Agriculture Exempted Development (2025) — https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/press-releases/regulations-on-agriculture-exempted-development-and-extension-for-change-of-use-from-vacant-commercial-to-residential-properties-for-another-3-years-signed/
• Department of Housing — PDA 2024 Commencement Circular No 2A re An Coimisiún Pleanála — https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/circulars/pda-2024-commencement-circular-no-2a-re-an-coimisi%C3%BAn-plean%C3%A1la-updated-2-july-2025/
• Department of Housing — reply to Heneghan PQ 43828/25 (vacant-to-residential notifications), 29 July 2025 — https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2025-07-29/1640/

2026 exemption package and consultation

• Department of Housing — Progress towards Exempted Development Regulations — https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/press-releases/progress-towards-exempted-development-regulations/
• RTÉ — Proposed exemptions for modular homes brought to Cabinet (21 April 2026) — https://www.rte.ie/news/2026/0421/1569267-ireland-politics/
• RTÉ — Renters thrown 'to wolves' over modular homes – Cairns (21 April 2026) — https://www.rte.ie/news/2026/0421/1569403-modular-homes-reaction/
• RTÉ — Modular homes in gardens liable for local property tax, Revenue says (13 May 2026) — https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0513/1573241-modular-homes-tax/
• Irish Times — Owners of back-garden modular homes face second local property tax charge, says Revenue (13 May 2026) — https://www.irishtimes.com/property/residential/2026/05/13/owners-of-back-garden-modular-homes-will-have-to-pay-local-property-tax-on-them-says-revenue/
• Irish Times — Property industry experts weigh in on back-garden modular homes (13 May 2026) — https://www.irishtimes.com/property/residential/2026/05/13/property-industry-experts-weigh-in-on-back-garden-modular-homes-from-tax-to-potential-income/
• Anglo Celt — Planning exemptions for modular homes brought to Cabinet (21 April 2026) — https://www.anglocelt.ie/2026/04/21/planning-exemptions-for-modular-homes-brought-to-cabinet/
• Labour — Government risks "shed-sits" as modular home plan rushed through Cabinet (21 April 2026) — https://labour.ie/news/2026/04/21/government-risks-shed-sits-as-modular-home-plan-rushed-through-cabinet/
• IPI — Irish Planning Institute calls on government to stop 'tinkering' with planning regulations (16 April 2026) — https://ipi.ie/2026/04/16/irish-planning-institute-calls-on-government-to-stop-tinkering-with-planning-regulations/

An Coimisiún Pleanála / An Bord Pleanála

• ABP Annual Report 2021 — https://www.pleanala.ie/getmedia/ad0a2dee-9721-4673-8f08-7d8cccddc5e8/Annual-Report-2021-EN.pdf
• ABP Annual Report 2024 — https://www.pleanala.ie/getmedia/aaad96a0-5b88-4cb6-b382-5387fce6c4e8/An-Bord-Pleanala-Annual-Report-2024-EN_1.pdf
• An Coimisiún Pleanála — https://www.pleanala.ie/en-ie/home

Office of the Planning Regulator reviews

• OPR Reviews Programme — https://www.opr.ie/reviews-programme/
• OPR — South Dublin County Council review (August 2024)
• OPR — Meath County Council review (May 2024)
• OPR — Roscommon County Council review (March 2025)
• OPR — Waterford City & County Council review (September 2023)

Local authority Section 5 / exempted development pages (selected)

• South Dublin County Council — https://www.sdcc.ie/en/services/planning-building-control/planning-applications/exempted-development/
• Cork City Council — https://www.corkcity.ie/en/council-services/services/planning/planning-application-process/exempted-development/
• Cork County Council — https://www.corkcoco.ie/en/resident/planning-and-development/exempted-development-applications-and-decisions
• Dublin City Council — Section 5 Declaration — https://www.dublincity.ie/planning-and-land-use/planning-application-rules-and-exemptions/section-5-declaration-check-if-development-requires-planning-permission
• Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council — https://www.dlrcoco.ie/planning-applications/exempt-development
• Meath County Council — https://www.meath.ie/council/council-services/planning-and-building/planning-permission/do-you-need-planning-permission/section-5-declarations-issued
• Waterford City & County Council — Section 5 / Exempted Development information — https://waterfordcouncil.ie/documents/planning-forms/
• Waterford City & County Council — Section 5 Register (live PDF, dated February 2026; direct HTTP fetch may return 403 due to WAF bot-protection but the register is operational) — https://waterfordcouncil.ie/app/uploads/2026/02/Section-5-Register.pdf
• Kildare County Council — https://kildarecoco.ie/AllServices/Planning/LicencesandDeclarations/Section5SI30/
• Longford County Council — https://www.longfordcoco.ie/services/planning/exempted-development-section-5-/
• Donegal County Council — https://www.donegalcoco.ie/en/services/planning/development-management/publications-notifications-and-planning-registers/section-5-declarations
• Tipperary County Council — https://www.tipperarycoco.ie/planning-and-building/planning-exemption-certificate/section-5s

Case law commentary

• Courts Service — Narconon Trust v An Bord Pleanála [2021] IECA 307 (Collins J. judgment) — https://www.courts.ie/view/Judgments/cbcc0391-c44e-407f-a7f2-797382dbd48b/1cc2fa3f-8034-47b9-8c29-071af5c49f0d/2021_IECA_307%20(Collins%20J).pdf/pdf
• A&L Goodbody — Court of Appeal rejects "collateral challenge" to Section 5 declaration (Narconon) — https://www.algoodbody.com/insights-publications/court-of-appeal-rejects-collateral-challenge-to-section-5-declaration
• Addleshaw Goddard — Court of Appeal Clarifies the Position in Respect of Conflicting Section 5 Declaration — https://www.addleshawgoddard.com/en/insights/insights-briefings/2022/real-estate/court-of-appeal-clarifies-the-position-in-respect-of-conflicting-section-5-declaration/
• Matheson — Irish Planning Legislation Overhauled – Yet To Be Implemented — https://www.matheson.com/insights/irish-planning-legislation-overhauled-yet-to-be-implemented/
• Michael Furminger BL — Exempt Development Under PDA 2024 — https://michaelfurminger.substack.com/p/exempt-development-under-pda-2024

Judicial review context

• Fine Gael — Over 250 judicial reviews taken since 2024 – Burke — https://www.finegael.ie/over-250-judicial-reviews-taken-since-2024-burke/
• Irish Times — Legal fees to be capped at €41,000 in standard judicial review cases (1 December 2025) — https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2025/12/01/legal-fees-to-be-capped-at-41000-in-standard-judicial-review-cases-for-successful-planning-objectors/
• Irish Examiner — Government's plan to cap judicial review fees 'an attack on lawyers' (1 March 2026; headline phrase is a direct quote from Bar Council chair Seán Guerin SC) — https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-41802251.html

Digital/infrastructure

• Annertech — Digital Transformation award for trailblazing ePlanning portal (21 October 2025; "Most Collaborative Public Sector Project", Public Sector Digital Transformation Awards 2025) — https://www.annertech.com/blog/digital-transformation-award-trailblazing-eplanning-portal
• MyPlan.ie — https://www.myplan.ie/
• CSO — Planning Permissions Background Notes — https://www.cso.ie/en/methods/surveybackgroundnotes/planningpermissions/

Comparative

• The Planner — Ireland round-up: Wexford planning breaches (16 May 2025) — https://www.theplanner.co.uk/2025/05/16/ireland-round-wexford-planning-breaches-waterfords-north-quays-glass-bottle-site

Compiled May 2026; corrections incorporated 19 May 2026. Treat the EirePlan internal figures (~1,400 discoverable cases vs 15,000–25,000 estimated true population) as the author's own analysis pending public dataset release.