Sir, – Lorcan Sirr’s article on the impact of judicial reviews is bereft of any credibility. His claim that judicial reviews are not the problem in our planning system is so utterly detached from what is happening on the ground (“Judicial reviews are not the problem – and deregulation is no answer,” November 26th).
Ireland now treats judicial review as a sort of national parlour game. Far too often a housing project cannot get out of the starting blocks before someone appears with a legal action, usually armed with an environmental report and a heroic desire to save the world from apartment dwellers.
The result is predictable. Major housing and infrastructure projects languish for years in the courts while the public wonders why rents keep rising and housing delivery keeps falling.
The numbers speak for themselves. While the overall volume of judicial reviews may be modest as a percentage of all permissions, the impact is very far from modest.
RM Block
It is overwhelmingly the large scale and strategically located schemes that get dragged into court. Blocking a single strategic housing scheme can remove hundreds of homes from the delivery pipeline. Blocking a transport or utility project can freeze entire communities.
If this is not a problem, then one wonders what planet the writer lives on.
Respected voices in planning and development have been clear. Delays driven by legal challenge are now one of the most significant drags on housing and critical infrastructure output.
Residential developers, senior planning practitioners, and the Government’s own taskforce on infrastructure repeat the same message. The issue is not the existence of judicial review, which is essential in any democracy. The issue is the sheer unpredictability, the slow pace, and the fact that a single challenge can derail years of detailed planning work, often resulting in millions of euro in lost investment in badly needed new homes and critical infrastructure.
Rather than romanticise the current process, we need to acknowledge that it is failing both the public and the environment.
A planning system that cannot enable delivery of new homes on the scale necessary to address our housing crisis is not protecting anyone. A legal process that allows repeated or tactical challenges is not accountability. It is inertia dressed up as virtue.
Reform does not mean ripping out safeguards. It means a faster and more certain system, credible and clear grounds for challenge, and a form of judicial review that serves the public rather than paralyses the planning system.
Other European countries have managed this balance without turning planning decisions into a legal epic. Ireland needs to get real and urgently. – Yours, etc,
PAT FARRELL,
CEO Irish Institutional Property,
Fitzwilliam House,
Dublin.
Sir, – Lorcan Sirr’s piece appears to frame any attempt at planning reform as “deregulation”, which ignores the reality that Ireland already operates one of the most restrictive planning and residential development systems in Europe.
Yet we deliver some of the lowest levels of housing despite having one of the fastest-growing populations. That imbalance cannot continue.
Nobody wants a repeat of the poor decisions of the 2000s, but meaningful reform is not the same as abandoning safeguards. A functioning system must protect quality and, importantly, actually deliver homes at scale without the legal industry earning its crust from objections.
A central part of that solution is taller residential buildings in well-located urban areas. Efficient land use is essential if we are serious about increasing supply and avoiding a future where temporary accommodation becomes the norm. – Yours, etc,
PETER LYNN,
Sandymount,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – Regarding your headline on an online article: “Transport Minister says MetroLink plans could be derailed for two years,” (November 26th).
This is following the submission of a judicial review. Numerous correspondents over the last few weeks have said judicial reviews are not the problem.
I think that those who have been waiting for decades for an efficient means to get into the city from north Dublin might beg to differ. – Yours, etc,
ROBERT LAIRD,
Cabra,
Dublin 7.
Sir, – A letter writer in today’s Irish Times points out that there is already a Luas connection between St Stephen’s Green and Charlemont and that considerable savings and time could be made by terminating the MetroLink at St Stephen’s Green.
I suggest that further savings could be made by terminating it at O’Connell Street, thereby avoiding the destruction of St Stephen’s Green which has already been blighted by Dublin City Council’s installation there of toilets and waste compactors.
Underground pedestrian connections could be made from the O’Connell Street stop to the nearby red and green Luas lines, as well as to the Dart line at Tara Street. Lengthy pedestrian connections (with travelators) are not uncommon in the much-lauded Paris metro.
The savings envisaged could be about ¤3 billion or 10,000 houses in today’s currency. – Yours, etc,
RICHARD HORGAN,
Clonskeagh,
Dublin 6.
Lawyers and engineers
Sir, – I am writing in response to David McWilliams’s article which suggested Ireland needs more engineers and fewer lawyers if it hopes to get anything done; a claim that, as someone studying law, naturally caught my attention (“To get things done, Ireland needs more engineers and fewer lawyers,” November 22nd).
I was disappointed to find the issue reduced to such binary terms – engineers as heroic builders, lawyers as procedural obstacles. This kind of categorical thinking reduces complex institutional realities to personality stereotypes.
The idea that infrastructure could be delivered simply by appointing more engineers in the Dáil misunderstands both professions: engineers themselves must operate within regulations, safety standards, contracts and legal frameworks. They do not build in a vacuum.
Moreover, the comparison made between China’s emergency-built pandemic facilities and our National Children’s Hospital is as misguided as it is misleading. The much-celebrated “10-day hospital” was a temporary modular structure, closed weeks after construction.
This is an apples-to-elephants comparison. China’s speed is achieved not through an innate “engineering impulse” but through an authoritarian governance model in which rights, consultation and environmental scrutiny are minimal.
Attributing Ireland’s infrastructural inertia to the professional backgrounds of TDs confuses correlation with causation. Lawyers and teachers appear frequently in politics because the work requires advocacy, negotiation and community engagement – skills those professions cultivate. None of this is to deny that engineers would be a valuable addition. Their technical insight would enrich policy on transport, housing, energy, climate action and digital infrastructure.
Be that as it may, advocating for greater engineering representation should not require belittling the contributions of others, nor relying on caricatures about who “does” and who “delays”. That is simply not how modern states function. – Yours, etc.
RUBEN GRACE,
Stillorgan,
Co Dublin.
Dumbfounded by housing entities
Sir, – Reading your report on not-for-profit housing bodies left one to wonder why anyone remains dumbfounded when trying to understand what lies at the core of the housing crisis (“More than 50% of assessed not-for-profit-housing bodies ‘non- compliant’ with rules”, November 26th).
The report tells us that the sector has 438 registered Approved Housing Bodies managing 68,000 homes. That’s a separate entity for every 155 houses.
Each of these entities have costs and overheads creating disgracefully wasteful duplication. Astonishingly, these entities collect €1.95 billion in rent annually and have €10 billion in assets.
Leaving aside the extraordinary ¤10 billion in assets – which in fact rightly belongs to all taxpayers as that is the source of this wealth – how many houses could be built each year just using the rental income from the 68,000 houses referred to? About 15,000 is a reasonable estimate, which would yield an additional 75,000 homes over the lifetime of the latest housing plan.
In light of the data disclosed, surely the logical thing for Government to do is to return the provision of social houses to the 31 local authorities where it most assuredly belongs.
Aside from the fiasco that we see now, is it ever a good thing that citizens are left to rely on charities to access such a vital social good? – Yours, etc,
JIM O’SULLIVAN.
Sligo.
Not impressed by Cop30
Sir, – Your leader, “Climate summit fails to deliver” (November 24th), doesn’t truly reflect how abysmal this meeting outcome really was.
Let’s look at some numbers. Globally, fossil fuels account (2024 figures) for 76 per cent of all energy sources. The other sources are renewables, 20 per cent, and nuclear, 4 per cent. In percentage terms, fossil-fuel use has dropped slightly over the last 10 years. However, percentages can be misleading. When we look at the actual usage of energy, this has grown in the same period. Fossil-fuel use too has grown in the same time. This indicates that growth in renewables is insufficient to counter growth in overall energy demand.
Apart from a small drop in 2009 (the global financial crisis) and again in 2020 (the Covid pandemic), the graph shows that there has been a steady rise in the use of fossil fuels. If we extrapolate the graph, it shows that fossil-fuel use will continue to rise.
We’re way past the time when target reductions in fossil-fuel use are of any value. It is now necessary to have a project action plan in place, including an approved budget and time schedule for completion, to convert all fossil-fuel use to renewables.
On a separate point, to demonstrate how irrelevant the Cop30 was, consider that one of the highlights was the imposition of a tax on air travel. Let’s put this into perspective. Air travel accounts for just about 10 per cent of all fossil-fuel use. Let’s assume that if the air travel tax achieved a 10 per cent reduction in flights, it would achieve just a 1 per cent reduction in fossil-fuel use. Hardly significant.– Yours,
BRENDAN MURPHY,
Sandycove,
Co Dublin.
Sports washing
Sir, – Autocratic oil states have invested vast sums of money into the world of eminent sporting events to improve their image over any human rights abuses in their countries and in his article, Denis Walsh concludes that: “In the end, oil money outlasted all the protests and sportswashing won” (Tipping Point, November 24th).
Oil barons knew a financial input that gave any advantage over rivals in sport would be a decisive factor over any relevant moral issues. Many soccer fans are now wallowing in the increased successes their teams have achieved since their clubs became owned by interests from the Gulf states. Supporters of other sports also enjoy the experience the new funding has brought to their games while daily human rights abuses continue in their benefactors’ states.
All is not lost however, as sportswashing has also served to raise awareness of the misuse of power and oppressions in the autocratic states involved.
Golfers having a high moral compass refused to take the king’s shilling and those who did have subsequently hardly prospered in their game, with LIV golf viewership remaining low and struggling to attract spectators.
Running such events at a huge monetary loss is obviously irrelevant to the Saudi kingdom, just a costly way to look respectable and enhance their standing on the world stage. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN McLOUGHLIN,
Ballina,
Co Mayo.
Some rugby diagnosis
Sir, – The rebranding of the RDS showgrounds, home of Leinster rugby, to the Laya Arena is particularly apt especially as modern-day rugby has become so physical as was further evidenced by the recent bruising encounter between Ireland and South Africa. – Yours, etc,
CHARLES SMYTH,
Kells,
Co Meath.
Sir, – A learned rugby friend of mine once informed my GAA friend, both unfortunately deceased and madly missed, that there are no rules and he was right. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL KIELY,
Co Meath.
Sir, – Earlier in the Autumn Rugby Series, Ireland played Japan. The smaller, agile Japanese played an expansive brand of entertaining rugby regularly stretching the Irish defence in the first 25 minutes.
Ireland’s response was to slow the game down, resort to scrum dominance, leading to penalties, followed by forward-led battering of the Japanese defence from close in.
I don’t remember a single letter complaining about the appalling state of modern rugby following the match. Just saying. – Yours, etc,
DAVE ROBBIE,
Booterstown,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – I endured two hours of misery last Saturday watching the Irish and South African rugby teams bore the pants off the viewing public.
I think it is time that World Rugby called on the proven expertise of Jim Gavin to review the game and suggest much-needed changes. – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN McGRATH,
Sutton,
Dublin.
Castles in the air
Sir, – Michael McDowell poses the question of whether “our crumbling castles” should be fully restored (“Should we re-roof the Rock of Cashel?”, Opinion, November 26th).
With the Office of Public Works in control of many of the sites, the words tea rooms, bike shelter, Castletown House and security hut will flash before the eyes of any official in the Department of Public Expenditure when presented with the funding request for any such project.
I would worry about the heart condition of the official if the proposal contains the words “rebuilding of walls” after the Lansdowne House debacle. –Yours, etc,
DAVID LOUGHLIN,
Dublin 6.
