Most hosts come to the Dublin rules looking for the ninety days, and they find them. What they often miss is the sentence just after, which says who the ninety days belong to. Get that wrong and the allowance is not reduced. It is absent.
Fourteen days is what makes a letting short
The regime came into effect on 01/07/2019, through the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2019 together with the Planning and Development Act 2000 (Exempted Development) (No. 2) Regulations 2019, which amend the Planning and Development Regulations 2001. It applies only to rent pressure zones, and Dublin City is one.
Short-term letting is defined as the letting of a house or apartment, or part of a house or apartment, for any period not exceeding 14 days. The measure is per stay. A single booking of three weeks is not a short-term letting under this definition, while twenty separate weekends are twenty of them.
This matters because the definition drives everything else. The ninety days, the forms, and the enforcement all hang off it. A property let in fortnight blocks sits squarely inside the regime, whatever its owner calls it.
The ninety days belong to a principal private residence
Residents, including home sharers, may let their entire principal private residence on a short-term basis for a cumulative period of up to 90 days per calendar year, where they are temporarily absent from their home. Above that threshold, change of use planning permission is required.
The word doing the work is temporarily. The exemption was written for someone who leaves their own home for a while, not for someone who owns a second one.
| Situation | What applies |
|---|---|
| A room or rooms in your principal private residence | Home sharing, unrestricted, exempt from planning permission |
| Your entire principal private residence, while temporarily absent | Up to 90 days per calendar year, then planning permission |
| A property that is not your principal private residence | No exemption at all, planning permission for any short-term letting |
The third row is the one that costs money. A property that is not ordinarily lived in by the owner and is not leased as long-term residential accommodation falls outside the exemption entirely. There is no reduced allowance, no first-ninety-days grace, and no threshold to stay under. Change of use permission is needed before the first guest, and applying for it is a planning process with a public file, not a form.
Home sharing sits at the other end and is treated generously. Letting a room or rooms within your own principal private residence continues on an unrestricted basis and is exempt from the requirement to apply for planning permission. The distinction is not how many guests you take. It is whether you hand over the whole home.
Form 15 before, Form 17 by the twenty-eighth of January
Relying on the exemption is not passive. You tell the planning authority in advance that you intend to rely on it, confirm that the house is your principal private residence for the whole of that period, and report afterwards.
Form 15
Notification of the number of days you intend to use for short-term lets in the year ahead. It goes in before you rely on the exemption, not after.Form 17
Confirmation of the specific number of days short-term lets were actually carried out during the previous year, due on or before the twenty-eighth of January.The register
The information submitted is held on a register by the planning authority. It is a record of what you declared, and it is what a later enquiry is compared against.
Two practical points sit around those forms. The property must be within the municipal area of Dublin City Council, which will not accept forms intended for another city or county council, and you need the Eircode of the property before you start.
Enforcement runs through the ordinary unauthorised development route. Complaints go to the Short-Term Lettings Section in writing or on the complaint form, and the council cannot open an investigation without the complainant's full name and address. That identity stays confidential under Section 35 of the Freedom of Information Act 1997 to 2014. A complainant may be asked in advance whether they are willing to give evidence in court, or to keep a log of dates and times.
Planning enforcement
Unauthorised development
Registration with the national body
A separate obligation
The national register and its December deadline
Alongside the planning rules, Ireland is setting up a register held by Fáilte Ireland. It covers hosts offering short-term accommodation for periods of 21 nights or less at a time, the register opens on 01/12/2026, and all hosts are required to register by 31/12/2026.
The legal driver is Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 on data collection and sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services, and the government approved the General Scheme of the Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill in April 2025. From 31/12/2026, platforms must display registration numbers clearly, verify the accuracy of the information, remove listings when Fáilte Ireland directs it, and share standardised data through a single digital entry point.
Note the mismatch and plan around it. The planning rules count stays of up to 14 days; the register counts stays of up to 21 nights. A three-week booking is outside the planning definition and inside the registration one.
Answering that in two lines needs one number written down and kept current: how many days the property has been let short term this calendar year. That figure lives in a booking calendar, not in anyone's memory, and it is the same number Form 17 will ask for in January. How that gets organised is described in how it works. London reaches a similar ninety with a different instrument, an exemption from planning control that a borough can switch off, described in Airbnb regulations in London.
