Over 50 jobs unfilled at An Bord Pleanála despite backlog in planning applications

A spokesperson for An Bord Pleanála said it was not immediately in a position to provide updated figures concerning its current outstanding caseload.

More than 50 jobs remain unfilled at An Bord Pleanála despite the ongoing, crippling backlog seen in planning applications across the country.

New figures provided to the Oireachtas housing committee show that the board currently has 261 employees, including 15 board members, an increase of 32% from the 197 people working there in December 2022, a year which saw both the board’s chair and deputy chair exit their positions.

An Bord Pleanála is currently approved for a staff count of 313, meaning 52 places remain unfulfilled.

The body continues to operate amid a severe backlog in planning cases, itself a hangover from 2022, which saw its board membership reduced to a bare minimum meaning that a quorum could not be reached for planning inspections to be officially ruled upon.

At the end of February, a report from the Office of the Planning Regulator, the State’s planning watchdog, said that the planning authority's outstanding caseload remained 2,400 strong. It had previously been at a high of 3,600. 

A spokesperson for An Bord Pleanála said it was not immediately in a position to provide updated figures concerning its current outstanding caseload.

Previously, the Irish Examiner reported that the backlog would automatically render planning applications for thousands of homes invalid as they had been lodged under an older system.

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Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin said that the new figures “make clear that An Bord Pleanála still does not have the required staff to address both its backlog and its incoming caseload”.

“They remain more than 50 staff short of their full sanction, and a significant number off what the former chair of the board believed they needed to have in place by the end of 2023,” he said.

This is a reference to statements made by former interim chair of An Bord Pleanála Oonagh Buckley, in early 2023, to the effect that the body would need 300 staff in place by the end of that year to adequately deal with its caseload.

Mr Ó Broin said that a further problem remains in that roughly half of the staff which are being recruited are coming from the local authorities, with no guarantee that those now-vacant roles are being filled at the same rate.

“While [housing minister] Darragh O’Brien has provided a sanction for 100 planning staff in the local authorities, this is far short of the more than 500 additional planning staff identified as being necessary by the Local Government Management Agency in 2021,” he said.

“As such, the minister cannot tell us if there are more or less staff in the local authority planning departments than there were a year ago,” he added.