Government plans to fast track major construction projects are still incomplete because difficulties in the courts have to be resolved. Few would quibble about the need to avoid excessive delays and vexatious obstruction in regard to major structural developments, because of costly experiences in the past. But it is important that the public at large should continue to regard the planning process as being fair, transparent and responsive.
In publishing a Critical Infrastructure Bill yesterday, Minister for the Environment Dick Roche marked an end to three years of indecision and disagreement within Government. In future, local authorities will not decide on major projects. Planning applications and public objections to them will be considered together by a special section of An Bord Pleanála. And the courts will become involved only if there are substantial grounds for claiming the board's decision was invalid.
Critics of the legislation have complained the Bill removes an existing layer of local democracy. And it does. The initial, local authority process will cease. And concerned individuals may find it more difficult to organise campaigns of opposition. Provision has, however, been made to listen to the objections of elected representatives and of environmental groups.
The arrangements should speed up the planning process at the level of An Bord Pleanála. But delays in the courts and the quality of planning applications were the major impediments in the past. Mr Roche has suggested the High Court may, in future, deal with planning appeals under commercial case management, with special judges being appointed to hear cases. But he gave no indication as to timescale or what resources would be provided to address this critical element.
A shortage of Government funding for the employment of planning experts caused major problems in the past. A report by the Ombudsman in 2001 spoke of a system "in a state of collapse". Thankfully, that situation has changed. And a more efficient system will be in place when a revised national development plan is published later this year. In the drive for economic development, however, the objections of local communities must not be ignored. Concerns that the new process may do just that have been given weight by Michael McDowell's insistence that the old rules should apply to an incinerator application in his Dublin constituency. The emergence of a two-tier planning system would be entirely wrong. Speeding up an application process for selected projects is one thing; nudging a statutory planning authority towards desired outcomes would be quite another.