LiLeinster InsiderNewsletter
Methodology

How we compute these figures

Every number on this site is computed from official Irish data with the same open, deterministic pipeline. This page explains the sources, the adjustments we make and the limits you should know about before relying on a figure.

Property Price Register sales to 2 October 2026, CSO RPPI to July 2026, RTB rents to Q4 2025. How we compute these figures

Sources

The VAT adjustment on new builds

The Property Price Register lists new dwellings exclusive of VAT, so a new build looks about 12% cheaper on the register than what the buyer actually paid. Before computing any median or yield we multiply new-build prices by 1.135 to add back the 13.5% VAT. This brings our medians within a few percent of the official CSO county figures. Second-hand sales are used as listed.

The 12-month median window

A town's headline price is the median of all sales in the 12 months to the newest sale on the register when the data was generated (currently 2 October 2026), VAT-adjusted as above. That window is cut from the register itself, so it runs later than the CSO index month shown beside it: the CSO series lags the register by about three months. We use the median rather than the mean because a handful of very expensive or very cheap sales would otherwise drag the figure around. The 12-month window is wide enough to smooth seasonal noise in small towns while staying current. Every median is shown with the number of sales it rests on.

The 50-sale floor on price-change rankings

On Movers and in the year-on-year columns of the ranking tables, any figure based on price change (year-on-year or 3-year growth) only shows for towns with at least 50 sales in both the last 12 months and the 12 months before. Year-on-year is a ratio of two medians, so it is only as stable as the thinner window: in a town with a handful of transactions, one estate launch or one large farmhouse sale can swing the median wildly. Rental yields in the ranking tables need at least 40 sales in the last 12 months, the same floor the town-comparison pages use. Every town still gets its own page, with its own count shown.

The rent review tool

The rent review tool illustrates the standard rule under the national rent control introduced by the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2025, in force from 1 March 2026: for a standard tenancy, rent increases are capped at 2% per annum or CPI, whichever is lower. The tool computes the 2% leg, applied pro-rata to the time since the last review; it does not hold a CPI series, so while CPI runs above 2% the figure it prints is the binding one, and the RTB's own calculator is the authority for any other case. New apartments and student accommodation whose construction commenced from 10 June 2025 follow CPI with no 2% cap, and a market re-set is allowed in limited cases, so the tool shows no figure for those. Informational, not legal advice.

Update cadence

The property dataset behind all 206 town pages and data tables is rebuilt from the latest PPR, CSO and RTB releases. Each data page shows the date or quarter each source covers, so you always know how current a figure is.

Schools explorer

The schools explorer uses the Department of Education's "Data on Individual Schools" dataset (data.gov.ie, CC BY 4.0): 1,181 Leinster schools keyed to the nearest tracked town within the county. County and town figures therefore cover schools near tracked towns, not an exhaustive county census. DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) is the Department's own designation for schools serving communities at risk of educational disadvantage; the DEIS share shown is a bare percentage of DEIS-designated schools in the dataset, with no ranking, catchment, or feeder-school claims: those fields are not in the source dataset and are not fabricated here.

Best-connected towns and the connectivity score

The best-connected towns ranking uses the Transport for Ireland (NTA) GTFS_All feed (CC-BY 4.0): each GTFS stop is keyed to the nearest tracked town within 6 km, walked stop → trip → route to get distinct operator and route counts per town. Rail station distance is the straight-line (haversine) distance to the nearest of 171 stations on the same feed. Employment hub distance is the straight-line distance to the nearest of 12 curated Leinster employment hubs (the same list Find your town uses, so the two tools never disagree). A town with no GTFS stop within 6 km shows "no GTFS stop within 6 km" rather than a fabricated zero.

The connectivity score is: (route count × 2) + (20 if served by Luas, else 0) + max(0, 20 minus the nearest rail distance in km, rounded) + max(0, 20 minus the nearest hub distance in km divided by 2, rounded). The weights are a simple, published choice, not a statistically fitted model; Bryan may retune them.

Three places are currently excluded from the ranking: Dublin 6W (a postal district with no meaningful town centre point) and Citywest and Rush, whose recorded coordinates in our town dataset are under review. They return once corrected coordinates land, rather than ranking on data we know is wrong.

Planning pipeline

The planning pipeline uses the Irish Planning Applications dataset (DHLGH ArcGIS FeatureServer, CC-BY 4.0): granted applications only, over the trailing 12 months, keyed to the nearest tracked town within 7 km. County figures aggregate only the towns this site tracks, so the "per 1,000 households" supply-pressure figure is per 1,000 households in tracked towns, not the full county population; it will undercount true county household counts. The largest-approvals list is a curated selection of 25 large grants from the digest pipeline, not an exhaustive list of every large grant in Leinster. This dataset is refreshed manually by re-copying the source file, separately from the property data; the page shows the data's own as-of date.

Heritage: NIAH buildings and monuments

The heritage county pages curate two national datasets to Leinster. Buildings come from the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH) Buildings Open Data, restricted to entries rated International or National: 527 of the 22,285 total recorded Leinster structures. Monuments come from the National Monuments Service's "Monuments to Visit" list, a curated 100-record national selection filtered to the 12 Leinster counties, with the dataset's own access caveat shown alongside every entry. Per-county totals for context (NIAH structures recorded county-wide, Sites and Monuments Record entries) are rollup figures only; the underlying record-level data for those totals is not published on this site. Both datasets are data.gov.ie, CC BY 4.0 (Dept of Housing, Local Government and Heritage).

Where to stay: the accommodation register

The where to stay pages use Fáilte Ireland's approved accommodation register (CC BY 4.0): every currently-approved hotel, Welcome Standard premises, B&B, guest house, self-catering property, caravan and camping park and hostel in the 12 Leinster counties, refreshed monthly. Every row is register-verbatim (business name, sector, star rating, unit count, town, county, Eircode and coordinates where Fáilte publishes them). The register does not carry pricing or booking links, so none are shown or fabricated.

Each property is matched to a town in three steps, in order: first by its own registered town or city field against our tracked-town list; second, for properties whose town field doesn't match but whose coordinates do, by nearest tracked town within 6 km; third, properties matching neither roll up to the county only. A town's own stay module only appears once at least 3 properties resolve to it, so a single guesthouse never gets its own thin section. The register's owner or proprietor name is never published on this site, only the business or property name Fáilte itself lists.

Licence and how to cite

Our compiled dataset is licensed CC BY 4.0. You are free to reuse it, including commercially, with attribution. Cite it as:

Source: Leinster Insider, leinsterinsider.ie/methodology

The full dataset is free to download on the open data page as CSV or JSON.