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

Photo of Alan KellyAlan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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I welcome the witnesses.

I have a number of different questions. The officials all know because they were there, but for clarity Mr. Walsh was assistant secretary when I was Minister, though in a totally different area, to be fair.

I commissioned the organisational review under Gregory Jones in 2016 because I believed it was necessary as it had never been done before. We had never had a review of An Bord Pleanála and I had concerns. All the actions have been listed as either "complete", "ongoing" or "to be determined". What is the breakdown? There is also a note saying a number of issues cannot be dealt with until the review of Housing for All is complete because there is a legislative capacity on that, which I understand because I have asked about it in the Dáil. However, there have been six years in between. There are so many issues here that have never been dealt with. For instance, recommendations Nos. 8 to 12, inclusive, on the appointment of members to the board, have never been implemented, and it is pretty obvious that they have to be. One of them is basically that it said the nominating bodies were completely out of date, which seems a pretty obvious one. Why then have they not been implemented and what is the breakdown regarding the three areas under which the board is claiming status on all the recommendations, six years after it was completed?