TIME - Village Magazine

PB October/November 2023 October/November 2023 69

was approved by cabinet lauding its vaunted

contribution to curtailing planning delays.

This legislative review mistakenly focuses

on the wrong goals – consistency, eciency

and speed. It obsesses over measures such as

setting statutory mandatory timelines for all

consent processes. But this will create an

incentive for quick decisions rather than

correct decisions. Parking for this purpose the

scandals revealed in the practice of An Bord

Pleanála in the last two years, by May 2021,

Justice Richard Humphreys had already

identiﬁed “a certain laxity in scrutiny [on the

part of An Bord Pleanála inspectors], involving

in eect the cutting and pasting of developers’

materials, without adequate critical

interrogation”.

By contrast, if the Bill dedicated itself to the

objective of achieving the best plans and

decisions, an incidental beneﬁt might be to

deter litigation.

If it is going to be heavy on legislation-

through-law, the Bill should legislate for

sustainability and excellence not speed

(which probably won’t work anyway) and

eciency. It seems past time the Greens in

government championed this. They have,

after all, traditionally been regarded as head

of the planning family.

that the proposal to allow ABP/Coimisuin

seek a stay in proceeding to make

corrections of error or fact in a decision

being challenged should be limited to

only “minor administrative errors”.

The thrust of the unseen ‘Bill as

initiated’ we can guess from January’s draft

will be to tighten the hierarchy of planning

policies and regulations that cascade down

from national government to regional

assemblies to local authorities and ﬁnally, to

individual planning permissions.

The Minister will be empowered to set out

important policy in ‘National Planning

Statements’ which will contain directives that

purport to be binding, termed ‘National

Planning Policies and Measures’ (which will

be operationalised in ‘Regional Spatial and

Economic Strategies’ and, in turn local

development plans.

The Bill will certainly be a signiﬁcant salvo

at taking back some of the powers of local

authorities by requiring their deference to

centralised standards. Whether the

requirements will be observed by headstrong

local authorities remains to be shown. Equally

uncertain is the appetite of the Planning

Regulator to exercise zealously its powers or

of any Minister to override Councillors in a

delinquent local authority who might be party

colleagues. Long-standing and egregious

failures of planning, including the sprawl of

Dublin and one-o housing, have been largely

perpetrated in contradiction to national

policy.

The good in the bill will be balanced by

fewer opportunities for public involvement in

decision-making for individual applications.

That will not work, as former Chief Justice

Frank Clarke has pointed out, because every

reduced opportunity will be litigated,

generating further delays. This did not stop

Eamon Ryan issuing a statement when the bill

he Planning and Development

(Amendment) Bill 2022 is Paul

Gallagher’s baby. It is about to be

birthed by his replacement as

Attorney General, Rossa Fanning,

and we still do not know what sex the baby will

be or much else about how it has survived the

pregnancy.

Clearly, Gallagher was premature in

releasing his January 2023 (rough) Draft

Planning and Development Bill 2022. It was

littered with placeholders and promises of

more detail. Perhaps Gallagher had a big

picture vision of the reforms he wanted and

delegated the details to his successor and the

Oireachtas to ﬁll in the many blanks.

Since January, civil servants have been

scrambling, and failing, to knock Gallagher’s

text into shape in time with the ambitious

deadlines set by Minister for Housing, Darragh

O’Brien who aimed to have the Bill enacted

“before Christmas” once cabinet approval

was received by “early September”.

However cabinet only approved the bill on

3 October. Even then this is not the deﬁnitive

text as further drafting is required.

All this will not leave sucient parliamentary

time for the Oireachtas to scrutinise this vast

bill before it rises for Christmas.

The Guide to the Planning and Development

Bill 2023, which was published to accompany

the cabinet’s decision has seen some changes

to the January draft as described in the last

edition of Village.

•

Some clarity has been given to the earlier

place holder provisions concerning

deadlines for planning decisions; ﬁnes for

missing those deadlines and the intended

Administrative Cost Scheme, but it is

acknowledged that even these details will

be subject to amendment as it passes

through the Oireachtas.

•

Only parties that will “be directly or

indirectly materially aected” by a proposed

development will be allowed to challenge

planning decisions in the courts. Moreover,

such parties may base their legal challenge

only on issues that they raised in their

observations at the initial planning

application.

• The criticisms levelled at the draft Bill, and,

no doubt the discomfort felt by the Green

Party, have led to the more egregious

assaults on the Judicial Review process to

be modiﬁed slightly. The hopes of many

builders that residents’ organisations will

be prohibited from seeking a JR of planning

decisions have been dashed and replaced

with stricter, but not onerous, governance

standards.

• Additionally, the new version has accepted

TIME

By J Vivian Cooke

Time for the Greens in government to

champion sustainability and excellence more

than time limits and efﬁciency in the now-

rushed Planning Bill just

approved by cabinet

ENVIRONMENT

CHECK

Left unchecked