Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 14 July 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
An Bord Pleanála - Financial Statements 2020
Vote 34 - Housing, Local Government and Heritage

9:30 am

Mr. Dave Walsh:

I will give an example, without going into individual cases, about what the courts found about one and a half years ago in regard to the analysis that the board reports and the board decisions were not providing sufficient information on analysis around sunlight and daylight. It is a very simple issue. One might say "where is the justification to enable us to satisfy ourselves on that issue?" That actually affected a number of cases. The board conceded those cases but since then - and back to the issue I mentioned to both Deputies Carthy and Devlin - the board has integrated those learnings into the reports so that now every single report that comes through on any file like that covers fully all of those aspects. The simple question is "How have we learned from those lessons?"