Galway County planning permission: how often it is granted, and how long it takes

How Galway County compares with the other councils

Refusals are more common in Galway County than in most councils. It ranks 25th of 30 on the share granted, 6 points below the median council (90%). Its median wait matches that of the median council: 55 days. Few files drag on: nine in ten decisions came within 178 days, against 209 days at the median council.

Requests for further information are less frequent here: the register records one on 32% of all the decisions it records, against 39% for the median council, and decisions are no slower than the median. For the 266 decisions flagged as one-off houses, the share granted (85%) is close to the council's overall figure.

The number of applications has held steady: 1,934 in 2019 and 1,920 in 2025. The busiest full year was 2021, with 2,427 applications; 20 of the 31 councils peaked in that year.

What Galway County reported for 2025

Galway County counted 131 applications for farm buildings, the third-highest number after Cork County and Tipperary. Dwellings dominate the rest with 1,043, while commercial premises (60) trail well behind. Government, health and education buildings barely appear (1), as does civil engineering (1). With 1,154 applications decided within 8 weeks, Galway County has the fourth-highest figure on that measure. It ruled 345 applications invalid and reported 113 refusals, 94 of them on houses and 6 on farm buildings. Social-use buildings (18) and industrial sites (14) complete the list, and nothing is counted under other functional categories. Commercial refusals (9) rank 6th nationally and farm-building refusals (6) 4th. The register treats Galway County Council and Galway City Council as two planning authorities, so the city's figures are on a separate page. One-off houses weigh heavily here: the register flags 266 Galway County decisions in the 12 months as one-off houses, the second-highest count after Clare. Filings fell from 2,427 in 2021 to 1,684 in 2023, the lowest full year in the series, and recovered to 1,920 by 2025. Only 7 councils ruled more applications invalid than Galway County's 345. It decided more applications within 8 weeks than Meath, Cork County and Limerick, whose returns are larger.

These figures come from each council's annual return to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage: applications received in 2025, decisions to refuse and other measures, published under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. An application that fits several categories is counted in each, so the categories do not add up to a number of applications, and the Department notes that councils may have read its guidance in slightly different ways.

Following an application in Galway County

In the national register, Galway County applications link to their files on eplanning.ie/GalwayCC.