Bord Pleanála internal review to finish within a month

An Bord Pleanála’s internal review of decisions by its deputy chairman, Paul Hyde, will conclude within four weeks, the planning appeals body has said.

The schedule for the review aligns with a separate senior counsel’s examination of Mr Hyde’s work, which was ordered by Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien.

The timeline set out on Friday by An Bord Pleanála suggests its work will conclude on June 24th, the day after Remy Farrell SC is expected to hand the conclusions of his six-week examination to Mr O’Brien. Mr Farrell is understood to have sought and received permission from the Minster to engage a junior counsel to assist in his inquiry.

Mr Hyde stepped aside temporarily from his role this month “without prejudice” to the two examinations, insisting that recent allegations of impropriety in his personal declarations to An Bord Pleanála were groundless.

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In a statement, the planning body said it was “conscious of the need to maintain the highest level of public confidence and trust” in the board and in its independence, impartiality and the transparency of its operations.

“In that regard, it has established an internal team of senior management personnel to examine a number of decided cases where public commentary has raised issues and concerns around the procedures and processes applied in those cases. This process of internal examination of certain files is currently under way but has not yet been completed.”

The internal review is being carried out by three senior Pleanála managers: Bríd Hill, the chief officer; Gerard Egan, director of corporate affairs; and Mary Kelly, head of human resources.

“It should be noted that the roles of these personnel do not involve them in any active participation in the processing of, or the making of decisions on, any planning cases that have been determined by the board and that may be the subject of this examination,” said An Bord Pleanála.

The Irish Times reported on April 30th that An Bord Pleanála had initiated a look-back audit of hundreds of decisions made by Mr Hyde. In its Friday statement, Pleanála said it “wishes to clarify and confirm that this process of examination is the process that has been described in certain recent media commentary as an ‘audit’ of certain decisions/cases”.

The reviewers will report the outcome of their examination to An Bord Pleanála chairman Dave Walsh, the body said. “It is currently envisaged that this group will complete its examination within the next four weeks.”

The statement said An Bord Pleanála notes “and is fully co-operating with” Mr Farrell’s parallel process for the Minister.