Uisce Éireann chief says 'banana' objectors are delaying projects and costing the State billions

Housing minister James Browne and Taoiseach Micheál Martin, centre, with Uisce Éireann's  infrastructure delivery director Maria O’Dwyer, CEO Niall Gleeson, and chairman Jerry Grant at the new Arklow wastewater treatment plant. Picture: Naoise Culhane

Environmental objectors to infrastructure projects are costing the taxpayer billions and stopping young people from buying homes, the CEO of Uisce Éireann has claimed.

Niall Gleeson, who was speaking at the official opening of a wastewater treatment plant in Arklow, Co Wicklow, said that a similar project in north Dublin which had received planning permission at the same time was yet to begin due to planning objections.

This, he said, had potentially doubled the cost from its €600m build cost in 2019. He said the project had had 18 objections, only one of which had been upheld by the courts.

Much of the basis for objections was environmental, he added, but said that this was wrong.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Uisce Éireann CEO Niall Gleeson with local children, 13-year-old Isobelle Gaffney and 10-year-old Harriet Gaffney,  at the new Arklow wastewater treatment plant, part of a €139m investment to end raw sewage discharge into the Avoca River. Picture: Naoise Culhane

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“Environmentalists are really just effectively delaying projects, I mean we are… the environmental improvers here. We are improving the environment”, Mr Gleeson said.

He said that while many objectors are legitimate “others are just serial objectors, and they are not adding any value and in fact the common good is being ignored in this whole process”.

He said a “cohort of people in this country... don’t want to build anything”, and referred to the acronym ‘banana’ — “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything”.

“We need to work on the objectors. 

They’re not really helping the environment.  They’re just costing the taxpayer hundreds of millions and they’re stopping our children from getting homes.”

Asked by the Irish Examiner about the scale of the issue, Mr Gleeson said it was likely that billions of euro worth of development was stalled.

“I would say that if you took it, the taxpayer and the State, it is probably in the billions. Private entities are losing a fortune through this kind of stuff as well.

“I know there’s a lot of work being done on the planning process and, actually, a lot of the planning process works pretty well with the local authorities and An Bord Pleanála,

But it’s the ones that are tricky to get through, the larger projects, that I think we need extra support.

"But that cost is real.”

Mr Gleeson later added that Irish Water, now known as Uisce Éireann, is happy with its current level of funding.

At the same event, Taoiseach Micheál Martin responded that the recently-passed Planning Act had streamlined the judicial review process, but said the courts should not be where planning applications are decided.

“That [act] has to be commenced now, but we do have a written constitution so these are not issues you can sort out at the stroke of a pen," Mr Martin said.  

"Once we go through planning, once you go through the local authorities, once you go through An Bord Pleanála, the pre-planning for all of that, the courts should not be ultimately the place where planning applications to get determined in my view.”

In 2023, a new Planning and Environmental Division of the High Court was launched. It currently has four judges and hears a number of cases weekly.