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

Do you own a place in County Donegal and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and I'd say Donegal is about the gentlest county in Ireland to try it in, because the Government's draft policy saves its hard line for towns above 20,000 people and only one settlement here comes anywhere near that mark. Going through the CSO's Census 2022 population table for towns, Letterkenny counted 22,549 residents, while the next biggest place in the county, Buncrana, managed 6,971. Donegal Town itself came in at 2,749 and Bundoran at 2,599, so the threshold everyone has been arguing about misses almost the entire county.

The catch is that the ground moved under Donegal owners on 1 March 2026. Until then, section 3A of the Planning and Development Act 2000 automatically made short-term letting a material change of use only where the house sat "in a rent pressure zone", and no part of Donegal was ever designated one on the Department of Housing's list. The whole State did count as a rent pressure zone from 20 June 2025, mind you, until those designations lapsed on 28 February 2026. Then section 30 of the Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026 deleted the geographic qualifier entirely, so the section now says flatly that using a house, part of a house or unit for short-term letting purposes is a material change in the use. So that means permission, wherever in the county you happen to be.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly in 2026: what Donegal County Council wants from you, what a change of use costs, the Fáilte Ireland register that opens on 1 December, the tax that attaches to the income, and how hard the council pushes once somebody complains. Everything below comes from the council's own pages, the Irish Statute Book, Revenue, the CSO and the county's planning record, checked in July 2026, and where a figure is still moving I've said so. Since you're probably weighing Donegal against somewhere else, run the property through BNBCalc before you spend anything on the planning side.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Donegal

That 1 March change lands harder here than the bare legal wording suggests, because few counties in Ireland lean on holiday accommodation the way this one does, and that imbalance is what the political pressure is built on. When the renter support charity Threshold ran the numbers in March 2026, Donegal came out at roughly 24.5 short-term lets for every home advertised as a long-term rental. That was third worst in the State, behind Kerry at 30.6 and Clare at 28, against a national ratio nearer four to one.

And the same analysis carries a second number that should stop any Donegal owner in their tracks: across the whole country, only 425 short-term letting planning applications were lodged between 2019 and May 2025. Almost nobody applied. That tells you the old rules were widely ignored rather than widely met, and closing that gap is exactly what the register is for.

The council already had a planning answer to all this before the 2026 change arrived, and it's worth understanding, because it shapes what you can and can't buy. Map 6.3.1 of the County Donegal Development Plan 2024-2030 carves the countryside into rural area types, and long stretches of the coast fall inside what the plan calls areas under strong holiday home influence. In those areas, Policy RH-P-2 ends on a sentence that a senior planning inspector quoted back in a 2024 Donegal case: "New holiday homes will not be permitted in these areas".

That's blunt, by planning standards.

Since much of the same coastline is also mapped as High Scenic Amenity on Map 11.1, Policy L-P-2 then adds that you can only build there where the nature, location and scale of what you're proposing integrates with the landscape.

Put the two layers together and the practical read is simple enough. Buying a bare site to build a new holiday home along the Donegal coast is close to a dead end, whereas bringing an existing house back into use has a real path, provided the planning side stacks up. So the model that works here isn't the one a lot of investors picture. It's an existing dwelling, converted, rather than a purpose-built let on a sea-view plot.

None of that means the council is hostile to tourist beds, mind you, and the newest version of the plan makes the point neatly. The elected members made Variation (No. 1) to the development plan on 27 July 2026, adding area plans for Donegal Town, Ballyshannon, Killybegs, Carndonagh, Bridgend and An Clochán Liath, and the Carndonagh chapter states plainly that the town "presently has a significant deficit in tourism accommodation" and supports tourism development on named opportunity sites. Reading through that variation, I couldn't find anything in it that changes the rural area types or the holiday home policy, so those still govern.

Keep in mind, though, that a plan wanting more visitor beds in one town and none in another is a plan you have to read at your own address. Do check which rural area type your site falls into on the plan's map viewer before you commit to anything, because the difference between a holiday home influence zone and ordinary countryside can decide the whole project before you've filled in a single form.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Donegal

Assuming your address clears that policy frame and you're able to move forward, there's still the question of what you actually apply for, and the answer surprises people: Donegal County Council issues no short-term rental licence, permit or registration of any kind. Nothing about short-term letting appears anywhere in the council's planning section or its A to Z index.

The planning permission is the licence. That's the whole local system.

Getting it works the ordinary way. You lodge either through the council's planning application page, which routes you to the national online portal and takes card payment, or on paper to Donegal County Council, Planning Services, County House, Lifford, Co. Donegal, F93 Y622. The council warns that an incomplete application will be returned to you as invalid, so don't forget the site notice and the newspaper notice before you send anything in. Citizens Information puts the normal processing time at about eight weeks, and a refusal can be appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála.

The money, at least, is modest next to anything else you'll spend on this property. A change of use sits in the class covering buildings other than houses and farm buildings, so Donegal's Schedule 9 fee scale charges €80 for each building or €3.60 for each square metre of gross floor space, whichever is greater. Retention permission runs at €240 or €10.80 per square metre on the same basis, and that's the one you apply for when the letting has already started.

That's cheap, as barriers go. Citizens Information describes exactly that scale as the change in use fee for short-term lettings, so the council and the State agree on which class applies. A section 5 declaration, where you ask the council to rule in writing on whether what you're doing is exempted development at all, costs €80 and the completed form goes to the planning mailbox.

Paying it is the easy part, though, and getting a grant is another question entirely. Citizens Information sets out what a planning authority weighs on a short-term let application: whether the area has high housing demand, high rent inflation, insufficient supply, and lots of short-term letting applications already. Where that's the picture, it says, permission is unlikely. Donegal scores badly on supply and well on demand, which is roughly why a coastal cottage and a Letterkenny apartment can get opposite answers from the same office.

That section 5 route deserves a moment of its own, because the exemption it points at is in a strange state right now. S.I. No. 235 of 2019 inserted article 6(5) into the planning regulations, and it exempts two things: short-term letting of up to four bedrooms in the host's principal private residence, capped at four occupants per bedroom, and letting that whole residence for no more than 90 days a year during a temporary absence. Both are written as applying "in a rent pressure zone", and the article takes its definition of that phrase straight from the old section 3A, which was deleted on 1 March 2026.

Since the statutory instrument itself has never been amended, that wording now points at nothing. The council's own recent exempted development notification form covers the subdivision of a house and detached auxiliary dwellings, and says nothing about short-term letting either way. Citizens Information, meanwhile, still describes the 90 day allowance and the Form 15, 16 and 17 notifications as live.

So the honest position is that nobody can tell you with confidence whether home sharing in Donegal is exempt today. Assuming you're relying on that exemption, make sure you get the council's position in writing through a section 5 declaration rather than reading the instrument yourself. Eighty euro buys you a document you can put in front of an enforcement officer later.

Layered on top of all of this, from December, comes the national register, which is where Fáilte Ireland enters the picture. Its short-term letting register opens on 1 December 2026, with a legal obligation to be registered by 31 December 2026, and it catches anyone offering paid accommodation for stays of up to and including 21 nights. Once you're on it, you'll get a number that has to appear on every listing and advertisement you run, and platforms will only be allowed to carry units holding a valid one.

Renewal then falls due every year, and registration also requires a legal declaration that the property complies with planning, building and fire safety requirements, which is the hinge tying the register back to the permission above. The fee still hasn't been announced, though, so treat anyone quoting you a number as guessing.

Required Documents for Donegal Short-Term Rentals

Since that declaration ties the register to your planning status, there's a strong argument for assembling the paperwork in the right order rather than in a rush next December.

Two bundles are involved, and they go to two different bodies.

For the planning application to Donegal County Council, you'll need:

• The planning application form, plus the fee addendum form, which is where you set out the floor area and the fee you calculated from it. Fees are payable in euro only, and the addendum notes that no cash should be sent by post.
• A site notice and a newspaper notice. The council publishes an approved newspaper list and a sample site notice, and an application missing either comes back invalid.
• A site location map and site layout plans at the scales set out in the Planning and Development Regulations.
• Application Form B, the supplementary form, where the development needs one.
• A pre-planning application form, which is optional and free. Send it to the planning mailbox and the council opens a file and returns a reference number. Be aware that site visits aren't conducted for pre-planning queries on single houses, so advice on a one-off let usually comes back by phone or email rather than as a meeting.

For the Fáilte Ireland register, once it opens, its own FAQ says an individual host will need a name, email, phone number, PPSN, date of birth, country of residence and a host address with Eircode, while a company registers with its business name, business number and registered address.

On top of that comes the unit's full address and Eircode, whether you're letting the whole property or a room, whether it's your primary or a secondary residence, and your maximum bed places and guest numbers. Fáilte Ireland reckons the form takes under five minutes if you have all that to hand. Remember that the compliance declaration is a legal one, so registering a unit whose change of use was never permitted is not a neutral act.

Donegal Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through the planning side and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax, and the first thing to unlearn is that this counts as rental income.

It doesn't. Your guests hold a licence rather than a tenancy, so Revenue taxes short-stay accommodation under Schedule D as either Case I trading income or Case IV occasional income, and never under Case V, which is where ordinary landlords file.

Charge	What applies	Who you settle it with
Income tax on the profit	Schedule D Case I if it amounts to a trade, Case IV if it's occasional	Revenue, self-assessed on Form 11 or Form 12
VAT on the accommodation	Reduced rate of 13.5%, once turnover passes the services threshold	Revenue
VAT on the platform's own fee	23%, applied by Airbnb to its service fee rather than to your nightly rate	Airbnb, on your booking statement
Local tourist or bed tax	None, since Ireland runs no national or council accommodation levy	Nobody

Which case you land in changes your deductions a great deal, so work it out early. Under Case I you get wear and tear on fixtures and fittings at 12.5% a year over eight years, a deduction for anything laid out wholly and exclusively for the trade, and pre-trading expenditure going back up to three years. So repainting a bedroom or buying bed linen before your first guest arrives is deductible.

Under Case IV, though, you get none of that. No capital allowances and no pre-trading deduction, and Revenue's long-standing practice allows a deduction for incidental costs directly tied to the service: platform commission, cleaning fees, the cost of breakfast, and a fair share of the electricity, gas and heating the guests actually use. Insurance, the TV licence and general maintenance are all disallowed, because you'd be paying those whether a guest turned up or not.

Rent-a-room relief is the other trap, and hosts fall into it every year. The €14,000 exemption sounds tailor-made for a spare room in Donegal Town, except that Revenue's manual on the relief requires letting periods of at least 28 consecutive days. It also 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". A weekend guest can never qualify you, then, no matter how the booking is worded.

VAT catches almost nobody with one house, although it's worth knowing where the line sits. Guest and holiday accommodation, expressly including web-based accommodation, is taxable at the reduced rate of 13.5% whatever the length of stay, but you only have to register once turnover passes the €42,500 services threshold.

Two smaller wrinkles sit under that. When restaurant and catering moved to the 9% rate on 1 July 2026, accommodation stayed where it was, so if you serve breakfast you'll be splitting the package across two rates rather than charging one. And Airbnb applies 23% Irish VAT to its own service fee rather than to what your guest pays for the room, so don't read that line on your statement as tax already handled.

One last item catches people on the way out rather than on the way in. Where part of a house is used exclusively for a trade, Revenue restricts principal private residence relief on that portion when you eventually sell, though it also notes that unless a room is used exclusively for the business, a restriction is unlikely. A converted annexe let year-round is a different animal, for capital gains purposes, from a spare room you use yourself over the winter.

Ireland-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those tax rules are national, and so, unusually, is nearly everything else governing your listing, because Ireland has no regional or provincial layer sitting between the State and the 31 local authorities. Donegal County Council administers national law here rather than writing its own.

The operative provision, as substituted on 1 March 2026, is short and broad. Section 3A(1) now reads that the use of a house, part of a house or unit for short-term letting purposes is a material change in the use. And "short term letting" means letting on a professional or non-professional basis for a period not exceeding 21 consecutive nights in return for payment, which covers a tenancy and a licence alike. That 21 night figure replaced the old 14 day definition, which quietly pulled a lot of Donegal's fortnight-plus summer bookings inside the net for the first time.

"Unit" borrows its meaning from Article 3(1) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1028, the EU short-term rental data regulation Ireland is implementing in full by 31 December 2026.

Rent pressure zones have gone as a concept entirely, meanwhile, because section 2 of the same 2026 Act repealed the machinery behind them on 1 March, and the Residential Tenancies Board confirms national rent control replaced them that day. No Irish town should now be described as being in one, so any 2024-era guidance that keys short-term letting rules to rent pressure zone status is describing a world that stopped existing.

The piece still to land is the policy direction, and this is where Donegal's numbers start to matter again. The Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment set out the Government's position on 19 June 2026, and it splits the country in two. Where a location's population runs over 20,000, "there will be a presumption not to grant planning", while providers in areas of 20,000 or less "will have a two-year period to achieve planning compliance".

Anyone operating for more than seven years then gets a presumption in favour of permission, so long as the development causes no serious flooding, pollution or traffic hazard. Minister Peter Burke framed the split as freeing up housing in the large towns while conceding that in many rural areas short-term rentals "are often the only available option" for visitor accommodation.

Run that against the census and Donegal comes out as well as any county in Ireland. Only Letterkenny clears 20,000, which makes it the single place in the county facing a presumption against permission, so anyone weighing a listing there should read the Letterkenny short-term rental guide instead of this one. Everywhere else sits under the line, Buncrana at 6,971 and Ballybofey-Stranorlar at 5,406 included. If you want to see what the restricted side of that line looks like in practice, the Athlone guide covers a town that sits just over it, while the Bundoran guide takes the county's busiest seaside market on its own terms.

Keep in mind, though, that all of this is still draft. The National Planning Statement on short-term letting is subject to Strategic Environmental Assessment and EU Services Directive notification, with a final version expected in the Autumn, and the Short Term Letting and Tourism Bill it depends on still hadn't been published when I last checked in July 2026. So the 20,000 threshold, the two-year window and the seven-year presumption are proposals rather than law, and no map of affected settlements has been published to settle where a town's boundary actually runs.

So don't plan around any of it yet.

Does Donegal Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

That seven-year presumption isn't a new idea, incidentally, and where it comes from explains a lot about how enforcement works on the ground. Under section 157(4)(a)(i) of the Planning and Development Act, the council can't send a warning letter, serve an enforcement notice or start a prosecution more than seven years after an unauthorised development began. An unpermitted holiday let running since 2018 is already out of reach.

So the draft policy mostly proposes to regularise what the time limit had settled anyway.

Inside that window, though, Donegal enforces harder than the national average, and the audited figures make the point better than any impression could. In the National Oversight and Audit Commission's performance report for 2024, Donegal County Council took in 245 planning enforcement cases and closed 212, of which 44.81% were dismissed as trivial, minor, without foundation, statute barred or exempted, while 55.19% closed through enforcement proceedings. Nationally the split was 52.12% dismissed against 40.26% proceeding, so Donegal reaches for the formal route noticeably more often than most councils do.

The middle column is the striking one, though. Fully 0.00% of Donegal's closed cases were resolved to the council's satisfaction through negotiation, and the audit commission names Donegal among only seven local authorities where negotiations produced no satisfactory resolution at all that year. That was zero cases, all year.

On top of that, the county finished 2024 with 1,337 cases still under investigation, one of the heaviest open caseloads in the State.

Read that as a warning about tone rather than about severity, and watch out for it, because if a complaint about your listing survives the council's first look, the evidence says you're heading for proceedings rather than a quiet conversation about winding it up.

We also know, from the planning appeals record, that Donegal short-term lets do end up in front of a decision-maker, and the Donegal cases I could find both went the same way. On 12 December 2023 the planning appeals board determined that changing a dwelling at Fahan from a principal place of residence to short-term letting use, outside any rent pressure zone, was development and was not exempted development. Then a year later a senior planning inspector reviewing a coastal house at Bunbeg recommended the board decide exactly the same thing, while noting a live council enforcement case, reference UD2379, running against that property.

Both predate the 1 March 2026 change, which is exactly the point. The board was already treating a Donegal holiday let as development needing permission, so anyone who assumed the old wording left them untouched was reading the position far too generously.

The complaint route itself is simple enough, and it cuts both ways. According to the council's planning enforcement FAQ, making a complaint is free and there's no online form, since everything arrives as a completed and signed PDF emailed to the enforcement unit. Complainants get an acknowledgement carrying a case number, a site can take up to six weeks to be inspected, and extra complainants on one case earn no extra priority.

Anonymous complaints, though, may not be considered at all. So the neighbour who objects has to put a name to it, and that's a real check on the vexatious version of this, even though the council still follows up substantive complaints as a matter of course.

Where a case does reach court, section 156 of the Act sets the exposure: on summary conviction, a fine of up to €5,000, or six months in prison, or both, and then a further offence for every day the breach continues after conviction, carrying up to €1,500 a day. That daily accrual is the part that hurts, because it turns a fixed penalty into a running meter for as long as the listing stays up.

Whether Donegal has ever aimed the full weight of that at a short-term let specifically, I can't tell you, since the council publishes no breakdown of enforcement cases by type. The national picture is thin too, given that only 425 applications were lodged countrywide in six years. So the absence of a long Donegal enforcement record tells you about the old rules, not about the new ones.

Thin isn't the same as safe.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Donegal

Given how much of the above turns on your specific address and your specific dates, the order you do things in decides whether you waste money.

The early steps are cheap, and they tell you whether the later ones are worth attempting.

1. Find out which rural area type your property sits in. Check Map 6.3.1 through the development plan's map viewer, because an area under strong holiday home influence bars new holiday homes outright, while an existing dwelling in the same zone can still be converted. The map decides it, not the townland name.
2. Read your own planning permission first. Both the 2019 exemptions and any grant of permission are conditional on the short-term use not contravening a condition already attached to the house, and a rural occupancy condition can end the conversation on its own.
3. Get a section 5 declaration for €80 if you think you're exempt. With the rent pressure zone wording in article 6(5) now orphaned, a written ruling from Donegal County Council is worth far more than anybody's reading of the statutory instrument, mine included.
4. Use the free pre-planning service before you lodge. Send the form to the planning mailbox, get your file reference, and find out what the area planner thinks about parking, wastewater and residential amenity while you're not yet paying newspaper notice rates.
5. Lodge the application, online or on paper. Budget €80 or €3.60 per square metre for a change of use, or €240 or €10.80 per square metre if you're regularising a let that's already running, and allow about eight weeks for a decision plus the appeal window on top.
6. Register with Fáilte Ireland between 1 and 31 December 2026, put the number on every listing, and diarise the annual renewal, since platforms won't be permitted to carry a unit without a valid one.
7. Sort the tax before your first guest, not after. Work out whether you're Case I or Case IV, keep the receipts that case actually allows, and forget rent-a-room relief entirely.

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

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, one planning department handles nearly all of it, and knowing when it answers the phone will save you a fortnight.

Donegal County Council, Planning Services is the first contact for pre-planning, applications, section 5 declarations and anything about the development plan.

• Address: County House, Lifford, Co. Donegal, F93 Y622
• Phone: 074 91 53900
• Planning email: [email protected]
• General council email: [email protected]
• Office hours: 9am to 12.30pm and 1pm to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday

To speak to a planner directly, though, the council runs a public telephone service on Friday mornings only, between 9.00am and 12.30pm, alongside fortnightly appointment-only clinics on Thursday mornings. Both were suspended from the week commencing 22 June 2026 until the week commencing 7 September 2026 while the development management team took annual leave, so do check that page before you build your week around a call. The clinics are reserved for substantial applications, meaning multiple developments or significant economic ones, which makes a single holiday let a Friday morning phone call rather than a meeting.

Planning enforcement runs as a separate team on a separate mailbox, so complaints and queries about unauthorised development go to [email protected] on the council's fillable complaints form, and any request for a case update needs the reference number from your acknowledgement letter.

Your municipal district office is the closest counter if you'd rather deal with somebody in person. The county runs five of them, covering Donegal, Glenties, Inishowen, Letterkenny-Milford and Lifford-Stranorlar, and the council's area offices open Monday to Friday from 9am to 4pm.

For the register itself, though, the council isn't the right door. Not even close. That belongs to Fáilte Ireland's short-term letting register, which publishes its own guidance on who must register and what the declaration involves, while the policy behind it sits with the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. Tax questions go to Revenue rather than to either of them.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Donegal on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Since the register is the thing most Donegal owners will meet first, it's also what they've been arguing about loudest, and the argument has been unusually public. What follows is my read of that public record rather than a survey, and I should say plainly that Reddit blocks automated access, so nothing below is offered as what any Reddit thread says.

• The self-catering trade thinks the timeline was never realistic. The Irish Self-Catering Federation told the Oireachtas Committee on Tourism in February 2026 that the bill is "enforceable but unworkable" and would "close down rural tourism", arguing that planning departments are ill-equipped for the influx of applications and that many of the country's 35,500 short-term rentals will never suit the long-term market anyway. Donegal's stock of converted cottages and coastal bungalows is exactly the kind of thing that argument was built on.
• Heritage owners made the same case from another direction. Historic Houses of Ireland told the committee its members' properties are overwhelmingly rural, and that accommodation income funds the roof repairs, conservation work and rewiring keeping them standing. Booking.com warned separately that a significant share of existing stock could fall out of compliance "not because operators are unwilling to comply, but because the system is too complex and the compliance window too short".
• Locally, the pressure runs the other way. Ocean FM reported in June 2026 that Donegal county councillor Michael Cholm MacGiolla Easbuig sees the register as a way to combat overseas investors buying up coastal properties and leaving a shortage of long-term lets, and in May the same station carried Independent councillor Jimmy Brogan urging owners of second houses to let them long-term instead, on the basis that plenty of Donegal families badly need somewhere to live.
• Housing campaigners think Donegal got off too lightly. Threshold called the decision to restrict short-term lets only in towns above 20,000 people "deeply concerning", pointing out that some of the worst affected areas, with almost nothing to rent long-term, are rural. With Donegal running at 24.5 short-term lets per available rental and only Letterkenny over the threshold, that argument is aimed squarely at counties like this one.

Take the last two points together and you get the real shape of the risk here. Donegal's exposure isn't that the current rules are harsh, because they aren't. It's that the political case for tightening them keeps being made with Donegal's own numbers, and the 20,000 threshold is still only a draft. So if you're modelling a purchase around that two-year compliance window, be aware you're modelling a proposal that hasn't cleared its environmental assessment yet.

Donegal spent six years in a grey zone built around rent pressure zones it was never designated, and it's now getting a national rulebook drawn up for cities it doesn't contain. That's the pattern worth carrying away, wherever you end up buying.

The rules that decide whether a property works are rarely written with your particular place in mind. So the useful question isn't what the law says in general, but which line on a map your own address happens to fall on. When you want the wider numbers before committing, the Ireland short-term rental market data is where I'd start.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need planning permission for an Airbnb in County Donegal?

Since 1 March 2026, yes, in most cases. Section 3A of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as substituted by the Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026, makes using a house, part of a house or unit for lettings of 21 consecutive nights or fewer a material change of use, which needs permission from Donegal County Council. Before that date the automatic rule applied only inside rent pressure zones, and Donegal was never designated one, though the planning appeals board still treated Donegal holiday lets as development needing permission.

How much does a change of use application cost in Donegal?

A change of use costs €80 for each building or €3.60 for each square metre of gross floor space, whichever is greater, under Donegal County Council's Schedule 9 fee scale. Retention permission, for a let that has already started, costs €240 or €10.80 per square metre on the same basis. A section 5 declaration asking whether your use is exempted development costs €80. Decisions normally take about eight weeks, and a refusal can be appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála.

When do Donegal hosts have to register with Fáilte Ireland?

The national short-term letting register opens on 1 December 2026, and every operator has a legal obligation to be registered by 31 December 2026. It applies per unit to paid accommodation for stays of up to and including 21 nights. You get a registration number that must appear on every listing and advertisement, platforms may only list units carrying a valid number, and renewal is annual. The fee has not been announced.

Does the 20,000 population rule affect Donegal?

Only Letterkenny, at 22,549 in the 2022 census. Under the Government's draft National Planning Statement, locations above 20,000 people face a presumption against granting permission for short-term lets, while everywhere at or below that gets a two-year window to reach compliance. Buncrana at 6,971, Ballybofey-Stranorlar at 5,406, Donegal Town at 2,749 and Bundoran at 2,599 all sit well under it. The threshold is a draft proposal and is not yet law.

Can you claim rent-a-room relief on a Donegal short-term let?

No. Revenue's manual on the relief requires letting periods of at least 28 consecutive days and contains an anti-avoidance rule stating that the relief does not apply to short-term tourist accommodation based on home sharing, including where it is provided through an online booking site. Short-stay income is taxed under Schedule D instead, as Case I trading income or Case IV occasional income, and is declared on Form 11 or Form 12.

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