Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have a specific housing issue to raise with the Taoiseach. The High Court yesterday quashed a decision of An Bord Pleanála yet again. The board had granted permission for 123 apartments at a site on the Old Fort Road in Ballincollig. That is place I know well and I am sure the Taoiseach also knows it well. This is not an isolated judgment. Month after month, the courts are striking down decisions of An Bord Pleanála, particularly planning decisions taken under strategic housing provisions of the 2016 Act brought in by the Taoiseach's constituency colleague, the Minister, Deputy Coveney. Last December, the High Court quashed a permission that An Bord Pleanála had granted for more than 660 homes in Rathmullan in Donegal. In other cases, An Bord Pleanála is simply holding up its hands. In March of this year, it consented to a High Court order quashing its permission for 614 residential units on RTÉ lands at Donnybrook. In July 2019, permission for 221 housing units at Cross Avenue in Blackrock, County Dublin, was dismissed because An Bord Pleanála had not gone through enough public participation, a basic requirement of planning law.

To be clear, the Labour Party is very supportive of An Bord Pleanála, its structure and use, and the need for it. I do not think any party in this State has a stronger history than the Labour Party when it comes to having independent planning regulatory processes in place. We have paid the price and taken lawsuits for that down the years.

There is an issue here, however. In its annual report for 2019, An Bord Pleanála refers to 17 judgments in the courts. The board was only successful in having its decisions upheld in nine cases. Its decisions were overturned in eight cases, and in seven other cases, it accepted there was a legal deficit in its decision process. That means 15 out of 24 cases were, therefore, lost. How many units are lost because of that? Given the crisis we are in, it is not good enough.

In 2015, I established a review group, chaired by Mr. Gregory Jones QC, to undertake an independent organisational review of An Bord Pleanála, which produced an excellent report comprising 101 recommendations over 257 pages.

Does the Taoiseach accept that the frequency and regularity of successful court challenges to strategic housing developments demonstrate a fundamental problem with either the proper functioning of An Bord Pleanála or a serious deficit in the 2016 legislation or both and-or a lack of resources in the board, which the board stated is the case in its recent national development plan, NDP, submission? Will the Taoiseach ensure that the implementation of all the recommendations of the An Bord Pleanála review group is prioritised, given that it is now five years since the report, which I dare say he supported, came in?

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