Corruption probe questions

Minister Jan O’Sullivan has said that an internal review into planning ‘irregularities’ vindicated the decision of her predecessor, Minister Willie Penrose, not to ‘rush headlong into appointing seven external planning consultants to embark on costly, open-ended inquiries’.

This internal review of complaints about planning in seven local authority areas has not found any evidence of corruption or abuse of public office by officials. Labour Minister Joan Burton, after the Mahon Tribunal Report was published, said that the basic rules of planning were contravened due to the corruption which permeated the various levels of the process. So, this begs the question, which is it?

Róisín Lawless