An Bord Pleanála to get second interim chief in 10 months

Separately, the Department of Housing said it is currently putting in place arrangements for the recruitment of a full-term chair and ordinary board members to An Bord Pleanála.

An Bord Pleanála (ABP) is to get its second temporary head in 10 months after the appointment of Peter Mullan to the role of interim chair by the Government.

Mr Mullan will take up the post in early September following the move of Oonagh Buckley to her new job as secretary general at the Department of the Environment.

He will be the third head of ABP in less than a year.  Previous chair Dave Walsh took early retirement in November 2022 amid the fallout after a report harshly critical of the board's internal mechanisms was not published.

Mr Mullan is a solicitor by profession who spent nearly 20 years in private practice, specialising in criminal law with Dublin firm Sheehans, before joining the public service in 2012.

Joining ABP in January 2023, he was one of 10 temporary appointments made to the board of ABP since Ms Buckley took over the interim role in the wake of Mr Walsh’s departure.

At the time, ABP’s capacity for decision-making had been crippled by having just four full-time members of the board—meaning that the numbers were not available to deal with the backlog of outstanding applications before it.

Prior to joining ABP as deputy chair, Mr Mullan had worked since 2018 for the Courts Service with responsibility for operations within the Circuit and District Courts. Preceding that, he had worked since 2012 as the chief prosecution solicitor for the Director of Public Prosecutions, his first role in the public service.

Separately, the Department of Housing said it is currently putting in place arrangements for the recruitment of a full-term chair and ordinary board members to ABP. A full term is seven years.

Oonagh Buckley's tenure

Mr Mullan’s predecessor Ms Buckley’s 10-month tenure at the authority has been a busy one, focused on the appointment of temporary members to bring the board to its full capacity of 15 and the hiring of 100 new staff to enhance the authority’s ability to deal with the planning logjam.

It has likewise not been without controversy.

In April of this year, Ms Buckley was forced to apologise to planning solicitor Fred Logue after telling the annual conference of the Irish Planning Institute that Mr Logue’s firm was responsible for half of judicial reviews against the board and that this was “lucrative” business.

“I’m very sorry that I became the story, that should not have been the case. And I’m very sorry I namechecked somebody who was not in the room to answer to those questions, I shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

Ms 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.