Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 23 February 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government
General Scheme of the Planning and Development Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed)
Mr. Philip Jones:
I might add to that in light of my former role. Internally within the board, there is a referral database, but it is not currently available on the external website. To put this in context, I calculated some figures. The proportion of referrals decided by the board is between 3.6% and 5% of its case numbers. In 2020, for example, 2,628 decisions were made by the board, with 96 referrals. It is not a huge volume of information on the ICT system and the board is developing it but, currently, as Mr. Lawlor highlighted, it is difficult to find it out. I outlined the figures. It is a small volume of information that could be made available but is not currently.