The Irish Planning Institute (IPI) — the all-island body for professional planners engaged in physical, spatial and environmental planning in Ireland — has announced the election of four new members as Fellows at the institute’s annual Autumn Planning Conference.

Planners have been made scapegoats by discontented politicians, idealists and the general public who have little appreciation of the complexity of the planning system, according to Iain Douglas, President of the Irish Planning Institute.

THE blueprint for developing our villages, towns and cities lacks long-term vision and is “a waste of time”, a planning conference heard yesterday.

The president of the Irish Planning Institute has said the National Spatial Strategy has been sacrificed to facilitate the speedier progress of the political agenda.

A MAYO housing development to cater for the elderly and disabled could be abandoned because of planning difficulties.