Call for planning fees to be reviewed ahead of increase
The increases will bring the third party fee for a member of the public appealing the decision of a town or county council on a planning application by another person or organisation to €210 while a request for an oral hearing will go up to €95.
A person or organisation appealing a decision relating to their own development, where that development is commercial in nature or has been categorised as unauthorised, will have to pay a fee of €630, up from €600. The top fee of €1,800, which applies when someone appeals a decision relating to their own development where it is both commercial and unauthorised, will go up to €1,900.
Only the €50 submission fee paid by a person who wants to make an observation rather than a formal objection, and the fees that apply to appeals under the Air and Water Pollution Acts and Building Control Act, remain unchanged.
The new fees come into effect on February 28.
Green Party environment spokesman Ciaran Cuffe said the fees were already out of reach of many people and the increases would only further exclude a large sector of society from the planning process.
“There is a particular problem for people facing repeated planning applications for the same site. That results in individuals having to find hundreds of euro in fees until they can’t pay any more and a developer gets permission by default.”
Mr Cuffe said the onus should be on developers to prove their development would not adversely affect the environment rather than members of the public having to prove the opposite.
An Taisce chairman, Frank Corcoran, meanwhile called on the Government to scrap the €20 fee for members of the public who want to make submissions on planning applications at local authority level.
The fee was declared illegal by the European Commission in 2003, in a ruling still being challenged by the Government.
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