An Bord Pleanála probe could see board members disciplined, new chair confirms
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An external investigation being carried out at An Bord Pleanála after a year of controversy could lead to disciplinary action against board employees, the planning authority's new chair has said.
Interim chair Oonagh Buckley told the Public Accounts Committee that senior counsel Lorna Lynch may suggest on foot of her inquiry “that further steps are taken, either disciplinary steps or referral to the minister in the case of a serving board member”.
Should that be the case, then she will not be in a position to publish that report for fear of jeopardising those proceedings, Ms Buckley said.
The chair had appointed Ms Lynch earlier this year to conduct a review of a previously-commissioned internal An Bord Pleanála report which was delivered last October and corroborated the reporting of a number of scandals at the body in the previous seven months. That report, titled “‘Examination of Certain Matters’, has likewise never been published.
Ms Buckley said she did not wish it to be the case that it was said “you had a report and you did nothing with it”.
“So I have gone and taken this next step, and I think it’s a really important next step,” she said.
She sought to clarify the number of housing development units that may be in jeopardy due to applications being delayed for so long that new county development plans have been put in place.
She said while 27,000 units applied for as part of Strategic Housing Developments (SHDs) remain undecided, it would be a “misapprehension” to conclude that all those units are at risk. Only “a small proportion” of them will be affected, she said.
Ms Buckley revealed that, in continuance of the legal issues which have dogged the board for the past four years, An Bord Pleanála incurred more than €9m in legal fees in 2022, roughly 90% of which was on foot of the judicial review of board decisions, with the vast majority of those court cases being taken against SHDs.
She further revealed 53 such judicial reviews involving An Bord Pleanála were decided last year, with the board losing nine of them and conceding 35.
Concessions are the “real problem” for the planning board in terms of those court cases, she said.
“We are conceding too many cases, we need to learn from them,” she said. “No public body should be conceding that amount of cases.”
Ms Buckley said An Bord Pleanála intends to amend its code of conduct, in the wake of former deputy chair Paul Hyde resigning amid allegations he had failed to adequately declare his property interests to the board, so it will be mandatory for board members to declare they have nil interests each year, as opposed to just leaving their declaration blank.
“We are still reliant on staff giving truthful declarations, we cannot police them,” she said.
In terms of the backlog of a year’s worth of planning cases which the board is currently dealing with, Ms Buckley said decisions were handed down in 90 cases last month, a figure which will need to increase to 300 in order to restore normal functionality by end 2023.