Couple's 'life on hold' with 17-month wait for planning decision

Patrick Cawley: 'We expected a decision within three months.'

A newly-married couple says their life has been put “on hold” for 17 months while they await a decision by An Bord Pleanála on an application to build their family home.

Wexford natives Patrick Cawley and Shauna Carr were granted permission by Wexford County Council to build on land owned by Shauna’s family outside Rosslare in January 2022.

When a neighbour appealed the decision to An Bord Pleanála, the couple assumed they would have an answer within three months, with t he expected decision date listed on the board's website as  June 16, 2022.

Thirteen months later, the couple has still not received a decision.

“Our life is on hold pretty much,” Shauna told the Irish Examiner.

“In terms of building our family home, it’s all just been pushed further and further down the road, and we still have no idea when we’ll know.”

No communication

“We’ve been phoning them once every two weeks for more than a year, and all they can say is that there is no decision yet. There is absolutely no communication,” said Patrick.

Shauna, a nurse, and Patrick, who works with a haulage company in Rosslare, have been living in Shauna’s family home with her grandmother and aunt, who Shauna cares for, while they await a decision.

“It is wrecking our heads, it is constantly on our minds,” she says. “We can’t plan.

"We don’t have children yet, but to have a family you have to think about what kind of environment we’ll be living in. Everything is up in the air.”

The couple has had to spend several thousand euro answering the objections of the appellant and go through the mortgage approval process three times, as each approval has lapsed after three months.

“In that time rates have gone from 1% to 3% with the inflation crisis,” says Patrick.

“And even if we were to get the decision tomorrow we’d have to wait another two months to see what the appellant is going to do.

"You’re looking at starting a build next year at the earliest.”

Backlog of cases

An Bord Pleanála has been hit with a crippling backlog of planning cases in recent months, a direct consequence of a year of scandal which saw the body’s board reduced to a minimum complement.

Outgoing interim chair of the board Oonagh Buckley told the Oireachtas housing committee earlier this month that ABP currently has 3,400 decisions awaiting analysis or a decision — roughly a year’s intake.

A spokesperson told the Irish Examiner that, in order to achieve great compliance with statutory timelines, “the board has moved away from dealing with cases in strict chronological order” and will henceforth apply “differing priorities” to its caseload.

The spokesperson said that this approach is necessary in order to ensure compliance with the timelines for handling appeals for large residential development (LRD — the successor to the much-maligned SHD system) in order to move the board away from the trend of having to pay penalties to developers where such timelines are missed.

However, since Ms Buckley’s retention as interim chair last November, the board has been reconstituted to a full complement of 15, most of them temporary members, removing one of the largest impediments to timely decisions.

“We appreciate they’re understaffed, but it’s a systems issue,” said Shauna.

"The Government talks about putting life back into rural Ireland. But I’m a trained nurse trying to work where I grew up, and I’m not being facilitated to do that.”