Cianan Brennan: Blame game not a good start for the new-look An Bord Pleanála
The offices of an Bord Pleanála in Dublin. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire
Thursday’s Public Accounts Committee hearing will be with An Bord Pleanála, the embattled planning body’s first appearance at the standing committee since its former chair took early (and sudden) retirement.
It will be of interest for myriad reasons given the scandals which have enveloped the Irish planning system over the past 12 months, but the overarching draw will be An Bord Pleanála's new interim chair, Oonagh Buckley, and her vision for where the authority goes next.
But Ms Buckley has already given a flavour of where she thinks the issues with the board's legal woes originate — namely, the inordinate fees it has been forced to pay to defend its own decisions in the courts. It’s a problematic opinion.
Last week, the public had a chance to hear from the new chair in her new role for the first time outside the environs of an Oireachtas committee chamber.
Ms Buckley, a career senior civil servant and qualified barrister, was appointed by the Government to take over from the unexpectedly-retired Dave Walsh last November in a secondment from her role of deputy secretary general at the Department of Justice.
A lot has changed since she came in. The board has been beefed up from four members to 15, and has been granted approval to raise its current staff numbers from roughly 210 to just under 300.
Separately, a wholesale reboot of the planning system is currently before the Oireachtas in the shape of a 738-page draft planning bill.
An Bord Pleanála probably needs a break just now from the endless controversy of the past 12 months, which saw both its chair and deputy chair depart for pastures new, the latter with criminal charges hanging over his head.
Scandal aside, however, the board has experienced a different kind of legal issue over the past four years.
Its legal fees have gone through the roof, mainly due to issues with the ramshackle Strategic Housing Development (SHD) fast-track approval system, first introduced in 2017 with a view to kickstarting Ireland’s sputtering housing market.
Instead, large swathes of SHDs have been judicially reviewed into oblivion as a result of planning board decisions having ignored or misinterpreted planning and environmental law.
One of the more controversial aspects of the new planning bill is the attempt to curb perceived ‘frivolous’ planning objections by making it more difficult (and expensive) for a citizen to take a judicial review against a planning decision.
All this was doubtless on Ms Buckley’s mind as she addressed the annual conference of the Irish Planning Institute in Clonmel on April 19.
It was a wide-ranging speech, full of insight, pragmatism and good humour. She sought to make a clean break from the scandals of the past year by stressing she wouldn’t be discussing them as they predated her.
The whole thing was perfectly appropriate, that is to say mostly forgettable. Then out of nowhere it took a turn for the controversial.
Ms Buckley brought up the issue of the seemingly endless series of judicial reviews facing the board, and mentioned that 50% of them have been taken by Dublin law firm FP Logue, fronted by environmental and information solicitor Fred Logue.
She professed herself “intrigued” that Mr Logue was also set to appear before the conference, and said “he’s right, by the way, rewriting the planning code just means he has another 20 years of JRs which is going to make his life very lucrative”.
She didn’t stop there. She asserted, on the back of her experience at the Department of Justice, that there are “business models" associated with taking judicial reviews against the State.
“Solicitors work out a way of making money from taking JRs and they don't have to be successful. In fact, they don't even have to be majority successful. They will still make enough money from the state that it makes it worth their while to do it,” she said, adding that if anyone present thought the end of the SHD framework would mean “all will be well in An Bord Pleanála”, she personally does not believe that to be the case.
Why is this problematic? Well first of all, singling out any one solicitor let alone Mr Logue (who declared himself “flabbergasted” by the reference last week) feels inappropriate. He may have taken many JRs against the planning board. He has also won almost all of them.
But more than that, if an Bord Pleanála is to earn public trust once more, it makes little sense to publicly follow the familiar playbook of saying that access to legal redress is the problem, as opposed to poor decision-making on the part of the board.
A spokesperson for an Bord Pleanála noted that Ms Buckley’s comments were aimed at noting that the board had not adopted to the rising number of JRs in recent years by recruiting additional legal resources.
They said that Ms Buckley had namechecked Mr Logue in order to agree with his publicly-stated view that the new planning legislation will likely lead to increased litigation.
That may be the case, but to the uninitiated, the speech seemed to intimate that an Bord Pleanála has suffered due to frivolous lawsuits. That is not the case. If it were, it would have won more of them.
More worrying, however, is that the board may seek to enter its brave new world by blaming everyone for its annus horribilis — except itself.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
