Planning objectors are now taking cases on \u201can industrial scale\u201d and are threatening the common good, the head of a key team of outside experts appointed to speed up infrastructure projects has warned.<\/p>\n
Objectors are winning legal costs too easily, said Sean O\u2019Driscoll, the former chief executive of Glen Dimplex, who chairs the Economic and Social Research Institute.<\/p>\n
He is leading a Government-appointed taskforce, which is due to offer major recommendations next month to speed up large construction projects.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce, Mr O\u2019Driscoll said: \u201cI live in a democracy. I went to vote, like a lot of people, on November 27th for a Government to decide what\u2019s in the common good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judges are now faced with industrial scale numbers of planning objections: \u201cThis is not serial objection. This is on an industrial scale. I do not want a judge ruling on that,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Driscoll. <\/p>\n
He noted that one significant objector said he had made 300 local authority observations and 30 An Bord Plean\u00e1la objections, along with four judicial reviews.<\/p>\n
Strongly condemning actions on such scale, Mr O\u2019Driscoll said: \u201cWe have citizens in this country who have no housing, their children have no prospect of housing, we\u2019re about to run out of water, we\u2019re about to run out of energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
His declaration came during a debate on the challenges facing the Government\u2019s infrastructure plans, where he was joined on stage by Trudi Elliott of the United Kingdom\u2019s planning inspectorate, among others.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe common good has to prevail,\u201d he said, adding that a report his taskforce is producing next month will have \u201ccommon sense embedded in it\u201d and objections on this scale will be \u201cseriously tackled and addressed\u201d. <\/p>\n
Clearly surprised by the details of Ireland\u2019s planning objection history and the number of cases being taken, Ms Elliott declared: \u201cUntil you sort this issue out, you\u2019re playing with both hands tied behind your back.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cI win more than I lose,\u201d said Ms Elliott.<\/p>\n
Clearly exercised, Mr O\u2019Driscoll said some planning applications for major projects are now running to 30,000 pages. \u201cThe more pages you have, the more you open yourself to potential trapdoors,\u201d he told the conference. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we did that intentionally,\u201d Mr O\u2019Driscoll said but it had \u201cgiven rise to huge, huge issues, and exposure\u201d. <\/p>\n
He added that planning objectors were winning costs too easily. The Aarhus Convention says that objections on environmental grounds should not be prohibitive. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t say, \u2018You\u2019re entitled to free legal aid\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Planning objectors are now taking cases on \u201can industrial scale\u201d and are threatening the common good, the head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,64037,10471,13,14,6,8752,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-100903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-british-irish-chamber-of-commerce","11":"tag-budget","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-housing-crisis","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}