Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 11, between lines 19 and 20, to insert the following: “(e) The Minister may, in consultation with the Minister for Justice and with the approval of Cabinet, introduce regulations to place High Court good practice guidelines on a statutory footing in order to have legally binding statutory timelines for the hearing of Judicial Reviews and for the issuing of Court decisions on Judicial Review related to planning matters governed by the Principal Act.”.

Obviously, the principal challenge with the pausing of a permission during judicial review is the length of time it takes for the judicial review to be heard and then for the judgment to be written. While there has been an increase in the number of judges from one to three, the big experience is while getting the case to be heard is one thing, the judges then obviously move directly to another case and there is often a very long delay before they write up the judgment, which is very bad both for the applicant and the third party, irrespective of what one thinks of the case of the individual judicial review.

I spent some time last year talking to legal experts and asked if there was some way for us to ensure that where judicial reviews are taken, they are expedited in a timely manner. I do not want to undermine in any way the quality of the legal judgments, but we want the decisions to be made in a reasonable time period. Three clear things need to be done. First, the number of judges on the Planning and Environment Court, a sub-panel of the High Court, needs to be increased. It has increased to three but I think it probably requires six.

There will also need to be better resourcing of the judges, both in terms of their capacity to hear the cases and write up the decisions but also because we have lots of conversations about statutory timelines for planning. While the Planning and Development Act 2024 has timelines for the board, unfortunately, it does not have timelines for preplanning or further information at local authority stage. However, there is a mechanism for applying statutory timelines to judicial reviews. As I am sure the Minister knows better than I do, the Master of the High Court issues good practice guidelines. It would be possible, following consultation with the Judiciary, to put those on a statutory basis, which would give everybody certainty. We all agree on the need for that.

Timelines in and of themselves are no use without the additional judges and resources. I know the Minister will not accept the amendment and I am sure he will find all sorts of technical reasons to argue the way I have drafted the amendment is not appropriate. This is an opportunity for me to urge the Minister, now that he has the responsibility, to look seriously at ensuring there is adequate resourcing through his negotiations and conversations with his colleague, the Minister for justice, and the Cabinet, and also to look at the issue of timelines.

Thankfully, the abandonment of the disastrous strategic housing developments and the unwinding of some of the very bad provisions of design guidelines introduced by the former Minister, Eoghan Murphy, have been removed and we have seen as a result a dramatic drop in the number of judicial reviews on residential developments, which is to be welcomed. However, there is still a significant flow of judicial reviews, particularly for infrastructure projects. I am interested in hearing the Minister's answer but, more important, I would be genuinely interested to see him to take this away and discuss it with officials and colleagues. Ultimately, we all want a planning system where everybody knows the timelines from start to finish. We want a planning system that makes good quality planning decisions.

Where there are disputes over matters of law or fact, those issues can be dealt with in a timely manner because then, of course, we would not be dealing with these kinds of delays. This is an eminently sensible proposition in principle and I urge the Minister to look at something like this as part of wider reforms, along with the Minister for Justice, Deputy O'Callaghan.

See this speech in context