Endpoints

Local Authority Lookup

Resolve coordinates, an eircode, or an address to the statutory local authority.

Resolve a location to the Irish local authority whose statutory area contains it.

The answer comes from a point-in-polygon test against the statutory administrative boundaries, not from proximity to nearby planning applications — so it is exact, including for sites close to a council boundary.

#Request

GET /ext/v1/local-authority

Supply either a coordinate pair or an eircode or an address.

#Query Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`lat`	number	Conditional	Latitude in WGS84 (EPSG:4326). Must be sent together with `lon`.
`lon`	number	Conditional	Longitude in WGS84 (EPSG:4326). Must be sent together with `lat`.
`eircode`	string	Conditional	Irish eircode, with or without the inner space. Matched exactly — eircodes are not fuzzy-matched.
`address`	string	Conditional	Free-text address, geocoded before lookup.

Coordinates are the cheapest and most precise input: they are used as given. An eircode or address is geocoded first, which introduces the geocoder's own positional error.

#Example Request

curl "https://api.eireplan.ie/ext/v1/local-authority?lat=53.4597&lon=-6.2181" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ek_your_api_key_here"

#Response Structure

Field	Type	Description
`local_authority`	string	Authority name, e.g. `Fingal County Council`.
`la_code`	string	Stable machine-readable code, e.g. `fingal`. Prefer this for storage and comparisons.
`lat`	number	Latitude actually used for the lookup.
`lon`	number	Longitude actually used for the lookup.
`formatted_address`	string	Present only when an `eircode` or `address` was geocoded.
`approximate`	boolean	`true` when the point fell outside every boundary and was matched to the nearest authority within ~500 m instead. See below.
`vintage`	string	The boundary set used, e.g. `2024`.
`source`	string	Attribution for the underlying dataset.

#Example Response

json

{
  "local_authority": "Fingal County Council",
  "la_code": "fingal",
  "lat": 53.4597,
  "lon": -6.2181,
  "approximate": false,
  "vintage": "2024",
  "source": "Tailte Éireann — Local Authorities, National Statutory Boundaries, Ungeneralised (2024), CC-BY 4.0"
}

#Authority Codes

There are 31 statutory local authorities. la_code values are lowercase, with no separators:

carlow, cavan, clare, corkcity, corkcounty, dlr, donegal, dublincity, fingal, galwaycity, galwaycounty, kerry, kildare, kilkenny, laois, leitrim, limerick, longford, louth, mayo, meath, monaghan, offaly, roscommon, sligo, southdublin, tipperary, waterford, westmeath, wexford, wicklow

Note that corkcity and corkcounty, and galwaycity and galwaycounty, are separate authorities. dlr is Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown; limerick and waterford are the combined city-and-county authorities.

#What This Endpoint Does Not Tell You

It is not a consenting-body lookup. It answers whose administrative area a location sits in. The body that actually decides a given application may differ: appeals go to An Bord Pleanála, strategic infrastructure development goes directly to An Bord Pleanála under section 37E, and foreshore consents go to MARA.

The boundary set has a date. Boundaries change. Cork City's area was extended substantially on 31 May 2019, so for a location in that area the 2024 boundaries return Cork City Council even though an application decided there before that date was decided by Cork County Council. Use the vintage field to record which set produced an answer.

approximate: true deserves a second look. It means the point was not inside any boundary and was attached to the closest one within roughly 500 m. That happens legitimately for coastal sites, piers, and reclaimed land, and also when a geocoded position is slightly off. Treat it as a hint, not a verdict.

#Errors

Status	Meaning
`400`	No usable location supplied, `lat` sent without `lon` (or vice versa), or coordinates that are not valid numbers or out of range.
`401`	Missing or invalid API key.
`422`	The eircode or address could not be geocoded, or the location does not fall within any Irish local authority.
`504`	The upstream geocoder timed out.

This endpoint never guesses. If a location cannot be resolved to an authority it returns 422 rather than a nearby or likely answer.

#Attribution

Derived from Tailte Éireann's Local Authorities — National Statutory Boundaries — Ungeneralised (2024), licensed under CC-BY 4.0. The source field is returned on every successful response; retain it, or credit Tailte Éireann, where you surface the result.