Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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1341. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government to report on the progress of the digitisation of the planning permission’s application process. [20882/25]

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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1342. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government to report the names of which local authorities are yet to join the National Planning Portal; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20883/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1341 and 1342 together.

The ePlanning portal innovation is an online system designed to standardise and streamline the planning application processes across the 31 local authorities, to provide a convenient online centralised system for members of the public to submit planning applications appeals, associated fees and submissions on planning matters. The delivery of an online planning process system will make a huge impact on the management of the planning process, offering efficiencies to the private sector planning service providers by reducing the costs involved.

The Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) is managing and coordinating the rollout of the ePlanning project on behalf of my Department. The system, seeking to integrate the IT systems of all 31 local authorities, is nearing conclusion, and is now operational in 28 local authorities. The three remaining local authorities - Wexford and Cork City and County Councils - are currently upgrading their planning systems and are due to go live shortly, with rollout anticipated to be completed in Q3 of this year.

The ePlanning portal may be accessed at planning.localgov.ie/en/local-government-ireland-planning-system

Following on from the ePlanning roll out, my Department is focused on the digitisation of all planning services through a National Planning System. The key objectives of this project, to be led by the LGMA, will be to identify an automated, user-centric solution which will cater for all planning and development functions and provide efficient, effective and robust reporting relating to these functions. A project board is currently being convened and is due to meet in the coming weeks.

In addition, another digital initiative is Myplan.ie, a web map portal providing spatial information relevant to the statutory planning system in Ireland. It is an initiative of my Department in conjunction with local authorities. The data is available through web map viewers, web map services and open data. The two primary datasets available on Myplan.ie are land use zonings from statutory development plans and planning application data. Planning application data is uploaded by local authorities to the National Planning Application Database on a weekly basis with my Department carrying out on-going quality checks and status monitoring of plans to keep Myplan.ie as accurate and reliable as possible. Currently my Department is updating the zoning data from adopted development plans with 22 of the 31 local authorities completed.