An Bord Pleanála hoping to clear backlog of 27,000 homes awaiting judgment ‘by year end’

An Bord Pleanála should be in a position to clear the backlog of 27,000 homes awaiting determination by the end of the year, its interim chairwoman has told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

Oonagh Buckley said the board was now back to a strength of 15 — having fallen to three late last year — and was back to determining planning cases. She said that while 27,000 housing units were awaiting a pending decision at the start of 2023, inroads were now being made.

“We hope to deal with all of those by the end of the year. We have determined appeals for 6,000 units over the past few weeks,” she told Fine Gael TD Colm Burke at a meeting of the committee on Thursday.

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“The decision-making process has recommenced. The engine is moving again,” she said, adding that two quorate boards were sitting simultaneously to deal with the backlog of cases.

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Ms Buckley, a senior official in the Department of Justice, was appointed to the position on an interim basis at the end of 2022 following controversies and scandals that had reputational damage on the planning appeals body. In addition, the departure of board members left it inquorate for key determinations in relation to planning applications and appeal.

The PAC, chaired by Brian Stanley (Sinn Féin) discussed the board’s financial account for 2021 on Thursday. Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) Séamus McCarthy told the meeting that it had paid out €7.8 million in legal fees during that year. It comprised a quarter of its overall budget.

Responding to a question from John Brady (Sinn Féin), Ms Buckley said the legal fees rose to more than €9 million in 2022 with little indication that the rate of judicial review cases taken against it will abate in the near future.

“A heavily litigated 2000 [Planning and Development] Act has been replaced by a new Act which is also subject to litigation,” she said. “The environment of judicial review [JR] cases will continue. I do not believe there will be a reduction in JR cases going forward. The only way that can happen is it becoming more difficult to win a case against An Bord Pleanála.”

In his opening statement, the C&AG said that fines imposed on An Bord Pleanála for failing to decide on strategic housing development (SHD) applications within the applicable statutory time period shot up dramatically between 2021 and 2011.

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There was only one fine imposed in 2021 which cost €10,000. However, there were 134 cases in 2022 where the deadline was not met, resulting in fines of €1.34 million.

Ms Buckley indicated it could be attributed to a glut of SHD applications up to April 2022 as the legislation governing that type of development was ending. It coincided with the well-publicised problems the board had during 2022.

The combination of those two factors, said Ms Buckley left “insufficient decision-makers in place to determine the cases received within the statutory time limit. A substantial number of penalty payments had to be made to applicants where decisions on SHDs were not made within the statutory time. Only one such payment of the €10,000 penalty was made in 2021 but 134 payments totalling €1.34m were made in 2022.

In response to a question from Cormac Devlin (Fianna Fáil) she said that there were a further €80,000 in fines paid so far in 2022 for not meeting the time limits.

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Ms Buckley said that to address all the issues facing the board, there has been a provision for a doubling of staff to 300. She also said that the board now has an in-house legal director and team, and that there are now two directors of planning, to cater for a high and complex workload, including new responsibilities in relation to marine planning.

The chairwoman also disclosed that the board won nine of its JR cases in 2022, lost nine, and conceded a further 35 cases, before they came to trial.

By way of explanation, she said there was a level of complexity with planning nowadays that required additional resources, skill sets and expertise. As an example, Ms Buckley referred to the board recruiting specialist ecologist skills, as well as marine biologists.

She said that while heavily litigated, SHD cases only drove part of the concessions, with 16 of them happening in relation to more conventional planning appeal cases.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Green Party) asked Ms Buckley if she would be prepared to issue a corporate apology from An Bord Pleanála, following the series of scandals that engulfed the board, which had an impact not only on its functions but on the morale of its staff.

Ms Buckley said she has asked barrister Lorna Lynch SC to carry out a scoping investigation into a substantial number of files and make recommendations to me as to any necessary next steps. The investigation is ongoing.