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

How Roscommon compares with the other councils

Refusals are more common in Roscommon than in most councils. It ranks 23rd of 30 on the share granted, 5 points below the median council (90%). Decisions take far longer than at most councils. Half of the decisions came after more than 99 days, when the median council takes 55 days; only 1 council has a longer median wait. Nine in ten decisions came within 252 days, against 209 days at the median council.

Roscommon asks for further information more often than most councils: the register records a request on 57% of all the decisions it records, against 39% for the median council, and its decisions also take longer than the median. For the 86 decisions flagged as one-off houses, the share granted (84%) is close to the council's overall figure.

The number of applications has held steady: 663 in 2019 and 674 in 2025. The busiest full year was 2021, with 732 applications; 20 of the 31 councils peaked in that year.

What Roscommon reported for 2025

Roscommon is the only council whose largest category is not dwellings: it counted 156 applications under other functional categories against 147 for dwellings, the second-highest figure in that category after Wexford. Farm buildings come third with 53, and all 8 categories have at least one application. The pattern carries into refusals: 12 in other functional categories and 31 on houses, out of 55. The council ruled 134 applications invalid. Social-use buildings (12), industrial sites and public buildings (11 each) make up the middle of the return, and civil engineering adds 5. Only 189 applications were decided within 8 weeks, the fifth-lowest figure, which fits the long waits in the register. On both the median wait and the share of further-information requests in the register, only Monaghan ranks above Roscommon. Its 12 refusals in other functional categories are the fourth-highest count on that line.

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 Roscommon

In the national register, Roscommon applications link to their files on eplanning.ie/RoscommonCC.