Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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274. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if planning applications relating to proposed developments on State-owned land that are submitted to a local authority by State bodies, such as the National Parks and Wildlife Service under the auspices of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, are required to be published publicly in regional newspapers and viewable free of charge in public buildings such as those at local authority headquarters, county libraries and or post offices; the penalties that exist for non-compliance with such planning requirements; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13855/20]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Part 4 of the Planning and Development Regulations 2001 specifies, in accordance with Section 33 of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, the provisions with respect to applications for permission for development of land. An applicant is required to publish a notice of proposed development in an approved newspaper and erect or fix a site notice on the land or structure where the proposed development would be situated. The planning application is to be available for inspection at the offices of the planning authority and a submission or observation may be made in writing to the planning authority within a period of 5 weeks beginning on the date of receipt by the authority of the application.

In May 2020, new Planning and Development (Section 38) Regulations 2020 were signed instructing planning authorities to upload all planning application documents onto their internet websites within 5 working days of receipt, subject to exceptional circumstances. Compliance with the regulations is required to process applications. Public participation is a crucial element of all substantive decision-making processes under the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, and is also a requirement under the UN Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation on Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Aarhus Convention) and the European Union Environmental Impact Assessment Directive 2011/92/EU in relation to specific types of developments.