An Bord Pleanála has given the go-ahead for a new €40m luxury hotel for Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green despite security fears being raised by staff at the adjoining offices of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The agriculture minister, who has an office on one of the country’s worst bottlenecks, has met with road building chiefs amid fears work on the long-awaited €160m N22 bypass could be delayed by up to five years.

The government is considering new measures in the budget to inject “adrenaline” into the apartment building sector in a bid to boost housing supply.

Campaigners opposed to a new motorway in Cork say they have raised thousands of euro towards a legal challenge against the road but that more donations will be required to meet the costs of the action.

An opponent of Apple’s stalled plans for a data centre in Co Galway has failed to prevent online giant Amazon securing planning permission for the first phase of its plans for a €1bn data centre in north-west Dublin.

Planning enforcement proceedings have been initiated against developers BAM for the storage for over a year of a rubble mountain on a Cork city centre site.

CONTROVERSIAL plans for Ireland’s first bio-diesel production plant have been approved despite the advice of a senior planner.

The US government wants to erect a new defence perimeter at its Dublin embassy — including a barrier almost 3m high and an outer cordon of 1m-high steel bollards — to protect staff from any likely terrorist attack.

An environmental group has secured leave to appeal against the rejection of its challenge to a grant of permission for a wind farm in Co Laois.

Permission for a wind farm in Co. Clare has been overturned by the Supreme Court due to An Bord Pleanála’s failure to make “complete, definitive and precise” findings required by European law for a valid Appropriate Assessment of the project.

Resourcing our judiciary is necessary to arrive at a planning system that is fit for purpose, one that can deliver major investment and infrastructural projects, writes Sean Finlay

ENVIRONMENT Minister John Gormley has insisted he is complying with the “letter of the law” in the way he is handling an incinerator project which he and his constituents oppose.