If the issue of planning has entered your life, through personal, community, or professional experience, you may well have trenchant views on how it does its business.

Right now, ABP is in the glare of an uncomfortable and unaccustomed spotlight. Senior counsel Remy Farrell has been appointed by Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien to examine allegations that that board’s deputy chairperson, Paul Hyde, had a conflict of interest in decisions he made. 

The board itself is also reviewing the work of Mr Hyde, who has been on the board since 2014. The allegations, which first surfaced on the website The Ditch, include that in various cases where he was a decision maker, family members had an interest. These include a failure to declare an interest when deciding on an application for an apartment development in Blackpool, Cork, last March.

Zero balance sheet

A company in which Mr Hyde and his father were the shareholders owned a nearby site. Mr Hyde has claimed he was not required to declare this as the family-owned company was dormant, with a zero balance sheet, and he would not have benefitted in any way from the board’s decision. Another case being examined involved him signing off on an appeal in 2021 over a property owned by his sister-in-law. On Saturday, the Irish Times reported that he has now informed the board he did not know his sister-in-law was the owner of the property in question. Other issues arise over cases that came before the board which may have involved a fire engineering company in which his brother is a director. Mr Hyde has, according to the housing minister, in the Dáil, denied any conflicts of interest.

While this controversy is shining a light on the body, there are other aspects to its existence and work that could do with greater scrutiny. For instance, Mr Hyde was chair of the subdivision on the board which made decisions on strategic housing developments (SHDs). The SHD model was introduced in 2017 to fast-track planning for developments that included at least 100 apartments. Central to the system was a process by which applications were made directly to ABP, bypassing local authorities and conferring greater power and responsibility on the planning board.

The system has been discontinued, largely because it has failed miserably.

Around a quarter of all cases led to judicial reviews of the board’s decisions. By last February, just two out of 32 completed judicial review SHD cases had been won by ABP. Surely such a scenario should have given rise to questions over how ABP was doing its business. Yet nothing was done about such a powerful body repeatedly getting it wrong.

The make-up of the board is another element that is less than transparent. Some would be under the impression that the direct appointment of members to a “board” would be similar to other non-executive appointments to semi- state bodies and various State agencies.

In reality, the board is made up of nine individuals who work full-time making executive decisions. The chair of ABP attracts a salary of €204,603 per annum, the deputy chair — currently Mr Hyde — is paid €144,056 and ordinary members receive €127,677. The term of employment is five years but members are routinely reappointed.

Qualification for office is vague and unspecific. Members are appointed, the minister for housing said in reply to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin last month, under the Planning and Development Act 2000. “It provides that appointments to the board by the minister are generally made from candidates nominated by panels of prescribed bodies,” Mr O’Brien said.

Powerful quasi-judicial role

So, to a large extent, the minister of the day has a relatively free hand to appoint whoever they want to a powerful, quasi-judicial role. Yet in an organisational review of ABP published in 2016, specific recommendations for appointments were included.

“Two board members should be recruited through open competition and should be selected for board membership by the Public Appointments Service in a manner broadly consistent with appointments to other public bodies,” the review by an independent group reported. It also recommended: “To encourage engagement in the appointment process from a wider pool of candidates, the process concerning the selection of board members should be amended, with a view to greater transparency and public awareness of board member duties and required qualifications.”

Six years on, nothing has happened to open up the appointment process. As with much else, it would appear that it is only when a controversy descends on one of the levers on State that long overdue reform will finally be addressed.