Planning objectors are now taking cases on “an industrial scale” and are threatening the common good, the head of a key team of outside experts appointed to speed up infrastructure projects has warned.
Objectors are winning legal costs too easily, said Sean O’Driscoll, the former chief executive of Glen Dimplex, who chairs the Economic and Social Research Institute.
He is leading a Government-appointed taskforce, which is due to offer major recommendations next month to speed up large construction projects.
Speaking to the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce, Mr O’Driscoll said: “I live in a democracy. I went to vote, like a lot of people, on November 27th for a Government to decide what’s in the common good.”
RM Block
Judges are now faced with industrial scale numbers of planning objections: “This is not serial objection. This is on an industrial scale. I do not want a judge ruling on that,” said Mr O’Driscoll.
He noted that one significant objector said he had made 300 local authority observations and 30 An Bord Pleanála objections, along with four judicial reviews.
Strongly condemning actions on such scale, Mr O’Driscoll said: “We have citizens in this country who have no housing, their children have no prospect of housing, we’re about to run out of water, we’re about to run out of energy.”
His declaration came during a debate on the challenges facing the Government’s infrastructure plans, where he was joined on stage by Trudi Elliott of the United Kingdom’s planning inspectorate, among others.
“The common good has to prevail,” he said, adding that a report his taskforce is producing next month will have “common sense embedded in it” and objections on this scale will be “seriously tackled and addressed”.
Clearly surprised by the details of Ireland’s planning objection history and the number of cases being taken, Ms Elliott declared: “Until you sort this issue out, you’re playing with both hands tied behind your back.”
Sixty-six High Court challenges were taken across the UK last year on large planning applications. By contrast, 125 were taken in Ireland last year, and another 88 have been taken in the first six months of this year.
The UK system does not allow for third-party objections, unlike Ireland, while there are greater hurdles, too, to objectors getting their legal costs paid. “I win more than I lose,” said Ms Elliott.
Clearly exercised, Mr O’Driscoll said some planning applications for major projects are now running to 30,000 pages. “The more pages you have, the more you open yourself to potential trapdoors,” he told the conference.
The State had taken an overly prescriptive interpretation of European Union regulations, including environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and the Aarhus Convention, he argued. Too often, full EIAs are having to be conducted on major projects unnecessarily when the legislation does not require it.
“I don’t think we did that intentionally,” Mr O’Driscoll said but it had “given rise to huge, huge issues, and exposure”.
He added that planning objectors were winning costs too easily. The Aarhus Convention says that objections on environmental grounds should not be prohibitive. “It doesn’t say, ‘You’re entitled to free legal aid’,” he said.
