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

How Kilkenny compares with the other councils

Kilkenny grants more often than most councils. It ranks 5th of 30 on the share of applications granted, 4 points above the median council (90%). The wait is longer than at the median council: 63 days against 55, so 8 days more for a typical decision. Nine in ten decisions came within 247 days, against 209 days at the median council.

Kilkenny asks for further information more often than most councils: the register records a request on 47% of all the decisions it records, against 39% for the median council, and its decisions also take longer than the median. For the 194 decisions flagged as one-off houses, the share granted (94%) is close to the council's overall figure.

The number of applications has held steady: 966 in 2019 and 976 in 2025. The busiest full year was 2021, with 1,055 applications; 20 of the 31 councils peaked in that year.

What Kilkenny reported for 2025

In Kilkenny, the second-largest group after dwellings (623) is other buildings for social use, with 198: only Limerick counted more. Farm buildings (116) and commercial premises (94) come next, then 37 industrial sites. Social-use buildings also account for 21 of the council's 68 refusals, against 39 for houses. Few applications were ruled invalid: 79, the third-lowest count in the returns, after Clare and Galway City. Its 37 industrial sites are the fifth-highest count, and its 94 commercial premises 6th. The civil engineering and other functional lines are empty, and 428 applications were decided within 8 weeks. Only Clare, Galway County and Offaly flag more decisions as one-off houses in the register. After a low of 820 filings in 2024, Kilkenny's count jumped to 976 in 2025. Those social-use refusals are the second-highest count on that line, after Limerick. Despite 116 farm-building applications, Kilkenny's return lists no refusal in that category.

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 Kilkenny

In the national register, Kilkenny applications link to their files on eplanning.ie/KilkennyCC.