People seeking planning permission for one-off housing in some rural areas are submitting "fake tests" stating sites are suitable for drainage and sewage systems when they are not, the chairman of An Bord Pleanála, John O'Connor, has told an Oireachtas committee.
Mr O'Connor yesterday appeared before the Oireachtas environment committee to take questions in relation to the board's annual report, published last month. Most of the committee members' questions related to the board's refusals of rural housing. In almost three-quarters of appeals against one-off rural housing last year, the board overturned the local authority's decision.
The board was becoming increasingly concerned about the risks of ground water pollution from septic systems associated with one-off rural housing and appeals against one-off houses received by the board were "usually from neighbours worried about their water," Mr O'Connor said.
When independent tests were carried out on the suitability of soil for drainage, in several cases it emerged that the tests submitted with the planning application were erroneous, he said.
"We are seeing a problem that fake tests are being conducted. We have come across evidence of tests that don't match up on site . . . Some of these tests just aren't reliable."
The chairman of the Oireachtas environment committee, Fianna Fáil's Seán Fleming, said in Laois, his home county, such tests could only be carried out by local authority officials and not the applicants. He said he was "very concerned" that this was not the policy in all counties.
Some 17,000 one-off rural houses were built in the State every year, a figure that was "higher than any other European country", Mr O'Connor said.
"If you look at the total number of houses being approved, you could hardly say we're being strict," he said.
However, where a local authority had zoned land for housing in an unsustainable manner, the board could not uphold planning permissions.
"Elected members should be aware that they should be zoning sustainably. If they do otherwise they are undermining the system," he said.
James Bannon (FG) said inability to build rural housing was holding back decentralisation. "The planning system is preventing people from returning to rural areas," he said.
