Kinsale, Ireland Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a house in Kinsale, County Cork and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that Ireland has never banned short-term letting, and Kinsale, a harbour town of a little over five thousand people on the south coast, runs on visitors for a good part of the year. The harder news is that since 1 March 2026, letting out a property that isn't your own home, for stays of 21 nights or less, counts as a material change of use anywhere in the country, so you need planning permission from Cork County Council before you take a booking.

Kinsale happens to be one of the few towns in Ireland where you can see exactly how that request tends to go, because the question has already been through the national appeals body three times. A duplex at 2 Market Place, a house at The Glen, and a house at 5 Viking Wharf all applied to use a home for short-stay letting, and all three were refused, the last of them in case PL04.318506, decided on 6 January 2025. Cork County Council refused each one at first instance, and the appeals board backed the council every time, even when its own inspector recommended the opposite. That's a pattern, not bad luck.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly: which lettings are still exempt, what the council charges and how long it takes, the three tax layers that attach to a booking, the national register that opens in December 2026, how enforcement actually works here, and who to ring when you get stuck. Everything below comes from Cork County Council's own pages, the Irish statute book, Revenue and the appeal files themselves, checked in July 2026, and where something is genuinely still moving I've said so. Before you commit to any of it, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Kinsale, Ireland?

There's no Kinsale by-law and no Cork County short-term rental ordinance, which surprises people, so the whole thing runs on planning law instead, and two pieces of it do almost all the work.

The first is section 3A of the Planning and Development Act 2000, and section 30 of the Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026 rewrote it in wording about as blunt as legislation gets. The section now reads, "The use of a house, part of a house or unit for short term letting purposes is a material change in the use." Since a material change of use is development, and development needs permission unless it's exempted, that one sentence is what puts you in front of a planner. "Short term letting" now means letting a place to someone for payment for a period not exceeding 21 consecutive nights, professionally or otherwise, and the commencement record for that Act puts the change in force on 1 March 2026 under statutory instrument 67 of 2026.

Two things changed that day, and both of them matter more in Kinsale than almost anywhere else. The old version of section 3A only bit inside a rent pressure zone, and the Bandon Kinsale electoral area was one, which is why every Kinsale appeal decided before 2026 turns on that designation, whereas the new version has no geography in it at all and reaches every townland in the county. The threshold also moved from 14 days to 21 nights, which quietly pulls in the one and two week family bookings that make up most of Kinsale's summer trade. So if your working understanding was "we're in a rent pressure zone, so the 14-day rule applies", both halves of that are now out of date.

The second piece is the exempted development regime, and this is the part that keeps ordinary home-sharing legal. S.I. No. 235 of 2019 inserted article 6(5) into the Planning and Development Regulations 2001, and it exempts two things: letting up to four bedrooms in your own principal private residence while you're living there, and letting that whole residence while you're temporarily away, for a cumulative maximum of 90 days a year. Go past 90 days on the whole-house version and you're back to needing change of use permission, because the count is cumulative across the year. Cork County Council's own short-term letting page sets out the same three reporting forms every council uses, Form 15 at the start of the year, Form 16 once you hit the 90-day cap, and Form 17 at the end of it, and it asks for all of them by email to [email protected].

One honest caveat there, because I'd rather flag it than paper over it. That 2019 instrument was written around rent pressure zones and takes its definitions from the old section 3A, and nobody has amended it since the zones were abolished. Reading the council's page in July 2026, it still describes the pre-2026 position in full, 14-day definition included. Nothing in it has been withdrawn, and Citizens Information still treats the 90-day cap and the three forms as live, so the safe reading is that home-sharing is still exempt. Do check it with the council in writing before you rely on it, though, and keep the reply.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Kinsale

Since the rule now turns entirely on whether the property is your own home, the honest starting question still isn't what a licence costs. It's which of two very different situations you're in.

Unfortunately for most people arriving at this page, the second one is the harder sell. If the property is an investment, a second home or an inherited house, you're applying to Cork County Council for change of use in a town where that application has been refused and then refused again on appeal. The planner's report in the Viking Wharf case is worth reading for the reasoning alone, since the appeals board file reproduces it in full. The council counted 15 properties advertised to rent in Kinsale and its environs against 15 whole homes and apartments advertised on a booking platform. It also noted 50 approved households on its own list waiting for three and four bedroom homes, and put a three-bed Kinsale rental at over €2,500 a month, "significantly exceeding county and national average". Its conclusion was a "clear imbalance between long-term renting versus short-term lets in Kinsale", and that framing has carried every decision since.

The two earlier refusals ran the same way. At 2 Market Place, in the town centre, permission for change of use of a duplex to short-term holiday letting was refused in 2023 because it would lose a residential unit and worsen the shortage of long-term rented accommodation. At The Glen House, about 1.4km north of Viking Wharf, a 2024 split decision granted retention of a rear extension and refused retention of the change of use, citing the strategic aim in the county plan to reinforce the town's compact form with additional residential development. Both of those, and the reasoning behind them, are set out in the inspector's report for the Viking Wharf appeal.

And the policy those decisions lean on isn't going anywhere, since the Cork County Development Plan 2022-2028 records a Kinsale population of 5,281 at the 2016 Census, sets a target of 6,338 by 2028, and puts the number of new housing units needed at 404. Its strategy for the town is explicit about "the better utilisation of the existing building stock", and for a named group of town-centre streets including Market Square and Market Lane it says conversion of houses to non-residential use that loses units for family accommodation "will be not be encouraged". Remember that a planner assessing your application is reading that.

So what's actually left? Four routes, and they're worth knowing before you spend anything:

• Home-sharing in your own house. Rooms let while you're there, unlimited. The whole house let while you're away, capped at 90 days a year with the three forms filed. This is the cleanest path in Kinsale by a distance.
• A property that already holds permission for holiday or tourism use. Circular Letter PL 4/2019, quoted at length in the Viking Wharf file, says the reforms don't affect homes or developments that already have a specific grant of planning permission for use as holiday accommodation or short-term letting. Dig out the original grant, because the parent permission for the Viking Wharf scheme couldn't be found and that absence cost the appellants their case.
• Applying for change of use anyway. Not hopeless, and Kinsale is well under the population line the government is drawing (more on that below), but you're arguing against a settled local position.
• Established use. Section 157(4) of the Planning and Development Act 2000 bars enforcement proceedings more than seven years after a development commenced where no permission was granted. That's a shield against enforcement, not a permission, and it comes with a real catch covered further down.

If Kinsale itself doesn't work, the rest of West Cork sits under the same council and the same county plan but a very different housing picture, so the Clonakilty regulation guide is the natural next read, and the Dungarvan guide covers a comparable south coast harbour town in Waterford.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Kinsale

Given how much of the above turns on permission, it's worth being precise about what you're applying for, because there is no short-term rental licence in Kinsale and there never has been. Two separate things stand between you and a legal listing, and they're issued by two different bodies.

The first is planning permission from Cork County Council, and its fees are set nationally rather than locally. Because a change of use to short-term letting counts as a commercial application, Cork County's own planning application guidance prices it at €80 or €3.60 per square metre of gross floor space, whichever is greater. Asking the council to rule formally on whether something is exempted development means a declaration under section 5 of the Act, and that costs €80, while a third-party observation on someone else's application costs €20. Retention, meaning you changed the use first and asked afterwards, is three times the standard fee, so €240 or €10.80 per square metre. A normal application runs to a decision in about eight weeks assuming nothing is missing, and either side can appeal to An Coimisiún Pleanála afterwards.

The second is the national register, which doesn't exist yet. Fáilte Ireland's short-term letting register will cover anyone offering paid accommodation for stays of up to and including 21 nights, per unit, nationwide. The government confirmed in a press release updated on 6 August 2026 that it comes into effect from 1 December 2026, with a legal obligation to be registered by 31 December 2026. Once it's running, Fáilte Ireland's own FAQ says registration is annual, the number has to appear on every listing and advertisement, and platforms may only list units that carry a valid one.

Two details about that register are easy to miss, and both are expensive. Registering requires a legal declaration that the property complies with planning, building and fire safety law. So the register isn't a way around the planning question at all. It's the place where that question gets asked again, in writing, over your signature. The fee is the other one, and it still hasn't been announced. Fáilte Ireland says only that fees will be kept to a minimum, so treat any number you see quoted elsewhere as guesswork.

Required Documents for Kinsale, Ireland Short-Term Rentals

None of that paperwork is exotic, but it does arrive in three separate bundles depending on which route you're taking, and mixing them up is the commonest way to lose a few weeks.

If you're home-sharing under the exemption, the pack is short. Form 15 goes in at the start of the year and, per the standard national arrangement, within two weeks before the first letting. Form 16 follows within two weeks of the day you hit 90 cumulative days of whole-house letting. Form 17 closes out the year. All three go to [email protected], and the council treats them as your registration, so don't forget that missing one is what turns an exempt letting into an unauthorised change of use.

If you're applying for change of use, you're making an ordinary planning application: the completed application form, a site notice erected on the property and a notice published in an approved newspaper, site location and layout maps, floor plans, the fee, and a description that says plainly what the use is. Kinsale sits inside an Architectural Conservation Area over much of its historic core, so if the building is protected or in that area, expect the conservation questions to arrive alongside the housing ones.

If you're relying on established use, the evidence is the whole case. The Viking Wharf appellants put four separate strands of proof on file that the house had been let since 2009, including Fáilte Ireland invoices for 2016, 2017 and 2018, and the council's planner accepted them. Bank records, platform payout histories, booking calendars, rating certificates and old advertisements all do this job. Keep in mind that you need the evidence to be continuous, because a gap resets the clock.

For the register itself, Fáilte Ireland has said the application will be data-only with no document uploads, collecting the property's Eircode and the host's PPS number rather than attachments. That's lighter than most people expect, so the real work sits earlier: getting the planning position sound well before December 2026.

Kinsale Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through the planning question and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax to deal with, and Ireland handles it differently from most places you might be comparing Kinsale against. There's no bed tax, no occupancy tax and no tourist levy here, at national or county level, so what you get instead is income tax arriving under a heading most landlords don't expect, plus a VAT threshold that only some hosts cross.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Income tax on letting profits	Your marginal rate, Case I or Case IV	Revenue, via self-assessment
VAT on guest accommodation	13.5%, only above the turnover threshold	Revenue
VAT on the platform's service fee	23%	Airbnb, on its own fee
Local tourist or bed tax	None in force	n/a

That heading matters more than it sounds. Revenue's manual on the taxation of short-term lettings is explicit that short-term guests hold a licence to use the property rather than a tenancy, so the income is never rental income under Case V. It's taxed as trading income under Case I, or as miscellaneous income under Case IV where the activity is occasional. You return it on a Form 11 or Form 12, and the practical consequence is that the rental-income shortcuts don't apply to you.

The one people get caught by is rent-a-room relief. That €14,000 exemption sounds tailor-made for a spare room in a Kinsale townhouse. It isn't available. Revenue's manual on the relief requires a letting of at least 28 consecutive days and carries an anti-avoidance rule putting it "beyond doubt that the relief does not apply to short term tourist accommodation based on home sharing, including where it is provided through online booking sites".

VAT is the layer that only bites at scale. Revenue's manual on guest and holiday accommodation puts guest and holiday accommodation, expressly including web-based bookings, at the reduced 13.5% rate whatever the length of stay, but registration only kicks in above the services threshold of €42,500. A single Kinsale house at typical seasonal occupancy usually sits under that. Two or three of them might not. Watch the threshold, since it's measured on turnover rather than profit. Separately, Airbnb applies 23% Irish VAT to its own service fees, which is not the same thing as anyone collecting accommodation VAT for you. Keep in mind that no platform pays your tax over to Revenue on your behalf here, so that job stays with you.

Possible Write-Offs and Deductions

Because the income is trading or miscellaneous income rather than rental income, the deduction question is the ordinary one for a small trade: expenses wholly and exclusively incurred in earning it. In practice that covers the platform's commission, cleaning and laundry, linen and consumables, utilities, insurance, repairs and maintenance, accountancy, and capital allowances on furniture and equipment.

The apportionment is where it gets fiddly, and it's the part worth getting an accountant's eye on early. A whole house let for four months of the year gives you a defensible time-based split on standing costs like insurance and heating. A spare room let year-round in a house you live in does not, since you're splitting by floor area and by days, and Revenue will expect that basis to stay consistent. So pick it once and keep it. Mortgage interest deserves its own look too, because the restriction rules people quote from rental-income guidance are written for Case V and yours isn't Case V.

Ireland Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Everything Cork County Council does sits on top of national law, and 2026 has been the busiest year that law has had, so it pays to know which parts are settled and which parts are still drafts.

The settled part is the one already covered. Section 3A of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as substituted on 1 March 2026, makes short-term letting a material change of use everywhere in the State at 21 nights or fewer. The same Act abolished rent pressure zones outright, and the Residential Tenancies Board confirms national rent controls replaced them on that date. No Irish town should now be described as being in a rent pressure zone, which is a genuine trap when you're reading older guidance or an appeal decision from 2024.

The unsettled part is where new permissions are heading, and Kinsale's size is the thing to watch, because a draft National Planning Statement on Short Term Letting was approved in June 2026. As the Department of Enterprise's summary of it explains, it would create a presumption against granting new short-term letting permissions in settlements above 20,000 people, a two-year compliance window for smaller places, and a presumption in favour where a use has run continuously for seven or more years without enforcement. Kinsale is nowhere near 20,000. On the current draft it would land in the second group rather than the first, which is the single most useful thing the statement says about this town. Be aware that the statement is still a draft, subject to environmental assessment and an EU notification process, with a final version expected in the autumn. It isn't law yet, and I wouldn't plan a purchase around it.

Two more national threads are worth tracking, and the first is the Short Term Letting and Tourism Bill, since the register depends on it. That Bill still hadn't been published as of my last check, having gone through pre-legislative scrutiny in February 2026. Meanwhile Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 has applied since 20 May 2026, requiring registration numbers in listings, a single digital entry point per member state and monthly data reporting by platforms, with Ireland completing implementation by the end of 2026. That regulation is why the register isn't going to quietly slip away.

Because the local layer is where the real variation lives, the picture in a city is not the picture here. Our Limerick guide covers a city well over the 20,000 line, the Bray guide covers a large commuter town in the Dublin belt, and the Carlingford guide covers a small tourism village closer to Kinsale in character.

Does Kinsale Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

At the decision stage, yes, and the three refusals above are the proof. Whether the council goes hunting for unauthorised listings afterwards is a different question, and the honest answer is that it's complaint-driven rather than systematic.

Cork County Council's enforcement page describes the sequence plainly, and it starts with somebody complaining in writing on the enforcement complaint form. The council then issues a warning letter to the person carrying out the development, investigates, and decides whether to take formal action, with an enforcement notice next if it does and prosecution after that. Any person can also go to the Circuit or High Court themselves for an order restraining an unauthorised use, which is a route a neighbour or a residents' association can take without the council's help at all.

The penalties are set by section 156 of the Planning and Development Act 2000, and the daily figure is the one that does the damage. On summary conviction in the District Court, the maximum is €5,000, or up to six months' imprisonment, or both. Where the offence continues after conviction, add up to €1,500 for every further day. That one compounds. On indictment the ceiling runs to millions and up to two years. Retention costs three times the normal fee, and the council warns in terms that a retention application doesn't automatically absolve you from prosecution if enforcement has already started.

That brings us back to the seven-year point, which gets repeated in Kinsale circles more confidently than it deserves. Section 157(4) really does stop the council taking enforcement proceedings once seven years have passed since an unauthorised use began, and that much is solid. The very next line, though, lets the council act at any time where a permission attached a condition about how the land is used, so a house whose original grant carries an occupancy or holiday-use condition gets no shield at all. Being safe from enforcement also isn't the same as holding permission, which is exactly why the Viking Wharf owners applied for retention despite claiming seven years of use. They told the appeals board they needed it to re-register with Fáilte Ireland and to satisfy the incoming European register, which will ask for proof of permission. Watch out for that gap, because it's the one the register is about to close for everybody.

For scale, the Irish Examiner reported in February 2025, from a briefing prepared for the Minister for Enterprise, that of 167 short-term letting change of use applications lodged nationally during 2024, 122 went to Cork County Council, which granted 87 and refused 9. I couldn't find an official publication of those figures to check them against, and they cover the whole county rather than Kinsale, so treat them as an indication rather than a statistic. What they do suggest is that Cork County is not a council that refuses everything on principle. It's a council that has refused this repeatedly in one specific town.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Kinsale

Given how much of that turns on facts you can establish before spending money, the order below is doing real work. The first three steps are the ones that tell you whether the rest is worth starting.

1. Settle whether the property is your principal private residence. It decides everything else. If it is, you're on the exemption path, and the whole-house limit is 90 days a year.
2. Pull the property's planning history. Get the original grant for the house or the scheme, and read the conditions. A specific permission for holiday or short-term letting use means the 2026 rules don't reach you. An occupancy condition means the seven-year shield doesn't either.
3. Ask the council in writing. A section 5 declaration costs €80 and gets you a formal ruling on whether what you're planning is exempted development, which is a far better position than an assumption. Send the same query to [email protected] so it's on file.
4. If you need permission, apply properly. Change of use is a commercial application at €80 or €3.60 per square metre, with a site notice and a newspaper notice, and about eight weeks to a decision. Never start letting and apply for retention afterwards, since retention costs three times as much and doesn't stop enforcement.
5. File Form 15 if you're home-sharing, at the start of the year and before your first letting, then Form 16 at 90 days and Form 17 at year end.
6. Register with Revenue and set the tax up before your first guest. Case I or Case IV, not Case V, and keep an eye on the €42,500 VAT threshold if you add a second property.
7. Diary the register. It opens on 1 December 2026 and you must be registered by 31 December 2026, per unit, renewed annually, with the number displayed on every listing.
8. Keep the evidence from day one. Booking records, payout statements, invoices and correspondence with the council. Whether you end up arguing established use, compliance or a register declaration, it all comes from the same folder.

Once the rules are clear, the remaining question is whether the numbers work at Kinsale's seasonality, which is where the Ireland market data is more useful than any regulation summary. A 90-day exempt letting in a strong coastal season is a different business from a year-round listing, and it's worth modelling it that way before you buy anything.

Who to Contact in Kinsale about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, four bodies handle nearly all of it, and knowing which one owns your question saves a lot of time.

Planning permission, exemptions and the three forms

Kinsale is in the Bandon-Kinsale Municipal District, and planning for it is administered by Cork County Council from County Hall, with a West Cork divisional address for area queries.

• Address: Cork County Council, Planning Department, Ground Floor, County Hall, Carrigrohane Road, Cork, T12 R2NC
• Phone: (021) 4276891
• Fax: (021) 4867007
• General planning email: [email protected]
• Short-term letting forms and queries: [email protected]
• West Cork area planning: [email protected]
• Opening hours: 9am to 4pm, Monday to Friday

Those details come from the council's own planning department contact page, and the Planning Policy Unit at the same address takes development plan questions at [email protected].

Complaints and enforcement

Enforcement complaints go to [email protected], in writing, using the council's enforcement complaint form. Remember that this line runs in both directions: it's how a neighbour reports your listing, and it's also where you find out what has been alleged.

Appeals

An Coimisiún Pleanála takes appeals against a council decision, and it's where all three Kinsale short-term letting cases ended up.

• Address: 64 Marlborough Street, Dublin 1, D01 V902
• Phone: (01) 858 8100, or 1800 275 175
• Appeals email: [email protected]
• Case files: [email protected]
• Opening hours: 9.15am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday, with no lunchtime closing

Its case search publishes the inspector's report and board order for every appeal, and for anyone weighing an application here it's the best free research tool going. Read the Kinsale files before you apply.

Registration

Fáilte Ireland runs the national register, and only the register. Planning stays with the council, so don't expect the register team to adjudicate anything Cork County Council has decided.

• Address: Fáilte Ireland, 88-95 Amiens Street, Dublin 1, D01 WR86
• Phone: 0818 888 800, or +353 1 574 1990 from outside Ireland
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00
• Register information: the short-term letting register pages

For tax, Revenue handles income tax and VAT registration, and MyEnquiries inside myAccount or ROS is the fastest route to a written answer you can keep.

What Airbnb Hosts in Kinsale, Ireland Report About Local Regulations

Talking to the council is one thing, and hearing what owners here actually say about it is another. I couldn't read Reddit for this, since it blocks automated access, so what follows is my read of what's on the public record rather than any kind of survey, and the best of that record happens to be the appeal files themselves, where Kinsale owners set out their case in their own words.

The arguments they make are consistent, and they're not unreasonable ones. The Viking Wharf appellants told the appeals board that the house had been let continuously since 2009 and that they had never had a complaint from a neighbour or any contact from the council about it. Their guests, they said, were mostly three-generation families staying a week or two, and putting the house into Kinsale's tourist economy was a better use of it than leaving it empty between family visits. They also noted, pointedly, that numbers 1 to 6 at Viking Wharf are all second homes and only theirs was being let, while their own estimate of long-term rent for the property was over €3,000 a month, which is the figure that most undercuts the housing argument against them.

Three themes come out of that, and they line up with what you hear locally:

• The scheme character argument is the one that nearly worked. The board's own inspector recommended granting permission, on the basis that Viking Wharf looks like a holiday home development rather than a standard housing estate: no rear gardens, private space limited to balconies, little usable open space. The board disagreed. So if your property sits in a genuine holiday scheme that argument is live, though a recommendation is not a decision.
• Missing paperwork from decades ago decides modern cases. The parent permission for the Viking Wharf scheme couldn't be located, and that gap is why the exemption for already-permitted holiday accommodation couldn't be relied on. So ask for the original permission during the sale, not afterwards.
• Second homes and let homes are being treated differently, on purpose. Nobody challenged the family's own use of the property. What was refused was letting it to paying guests. That distinction is doing a lot of quiet work in Kinsale, where a large share of the housing stock near the water is second homes.

None of that is a reason to write the town off. It is a reason to treat "everyone here does it" as the least reliable thing anyone will tell you. Three owners did exactly that. All three have the answer in writing now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Kinsale, Ireland in 2026?

Yes, with a real condition attached. Letting rooms in your own principal private residence is exempted development, and so is letting that whole home while you're away, up to 90 days a year, provided you file Forms 15, 16 and 17 with Cork County Council. Anything else, meaning a second home, an investment property or an inherited house let for stays of 21 nights or less, is a material change of use and needs planning permission first.

Do you need planning permission for a short-term let in Kinsale?

For any property that is not your principal private residence, yes. Section 3A of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as substituted on 1 March 2026, makes short-term letting a material change of use everywhere in Ireland, with no rent pressure zone limitation and a threshold of 21 consecutive nights. Cork County Council decides the application, and An Coimisiún Pleanála hears appeals. Three Kinsale applications have been refused on appeal.

How much does it cost to apply for change of use in Kinsale?

A commercial change of use application costs €80 or €3.60 per square metre of gross floor space, whichever is greater, under Cork County Council's published fee schedule. A section 5 declaration asking whether something is exempted development costs €80, and a third-party observation costs €20. Retention, applied for after the fact, costs three times the standard fee, so €240 or €10.80 per square metre.

Is there a tourist tax or bed tax on short-term rentals in Kinsale?

No. Ireland has no national tourist tax, no occupancy tax and no local bed tax, and Cork County Council does not levy one. What applies instead is income tax on your letting profits, assessed as trading income under Case I or miscellaneous income under Case IV rather than as rental income, plus VAT at 13.5% on guest accommodation once your turnover passes the €42,500 services threshold.

When does Ireland's short-term letting register open?

The Fáilte Ireland register comes into effect from 1 December 2026, with a legal obligation to be registered by 31 December 2026. It covers anyone offering paid accommodation for stays of up to 21 nights, applies per unit, renews annually, and requires a declaration that the property complies with planning, building and fire safety law. The registration number must appear on every listing, and platforms may only advertise units holding a valid one. The fee has not been announced.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.