Commencement notices — Donegal County Council
217, latest September 2026.
217 was the total. Residential units commenced accounted for the largest share (113, 52%). Next largest was Notices for residential development (54). The largest year-on-year movement was One-off residential units, 25% lower (50).
What these terms mean
- Commencement notice
- A legal notification to a Building Control Authority that construction work covered by the Building Regulations is about to begin. Source
- Why this is not planning permissions or completions
- Permissions measure intent to seek approval; commencements measure intent to build (this dataset); completions measure homes actually finished. The three move at different times, sometimes years apart.
Before you use these figures
- Not available for this area: No figure is published at or above Donegal.
- Unusually high in February 2025: This area's February 2025 figure is unusually high compared with what other areas reported for February 2025 — 90 against a typical figure (median) of about 8 across 30 other areas that period. No longer this dataset's latest period, so a look at just today's headline figure would not have caught it — flagged here from a check across the dataset's full history. Worth checking against the source before treating it as a straightforward trend.
- A commencement notice precedes building, it is not a completion: A commencement notice is a legal notification that construction work is about to begin, collected via the Building Control Management System (BCMS). It measures intent to start building, not homes finished -- see the completions dataset for that. The gap between a commencement and a completion can run to months or years.
- Small authorities swing on single developments: In a smaller local authority a single large development's notice can swing a month's total sharply. Percentage changes are large and ordinary at this level and describe building scheduling more than housing policy.
- One-off units are included in the residential-units headline: The headline 'residential units commenced' figure already includes one-off (single, self-build) units -- they are not a separate count to add on top.
Cite this figure:
Commencement notices 217 for Donegal County Council (not the same area as Donegal), September 2026 Caveats: Not available for this area; Unusually high in February 2025; A commencement notice precedes building, it is not a completion; Small authorities swing on single developments; One-off units are included in the residential-units headline StatsMapped last confirmed this figure unchanged on 29 Oct 2026. Source: CSO PxStat https://statsmapped.com/ireland/county/donegal/commencement-notices-donegal-county-council