Residents' Associations to be barred from challenging planning decisions

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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Resident groups to be barred from taking High Court actions against planning decisions

Darragh O’Brien push to deliver new homes to be aided by making it harder for objectors to challenge planning decisions
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This doesn't make any sense to me.


The planning system needs to be speeded up.
Citizens and their representatives need to have the right to object and to challenge bad decisions by An Bord Pleanala.
Frivolous cases need to be thrown out early.
Objectors can't be allowed to drag cases out for years.

But many of the High Court challenges have succeeded. So they were worth taking whether by individuals or by residents' associations.

Maybe the law needs to be changed to give the need for housing a greater weight than other considerations.
 
Given the housing emergency, maybe set up a separate division of the High Court that deals with such planning issues.

They would have a mandate to case manage challenges and make sure that they are heard promptly.

If they felt that a challenge was frivolous or designed to slow things down, they could demand that the challenger lodge the costs of the other side up front in case they lose.

But the court would understand that their role was to minimise all delays in planning while protecting the integrity of the system.

Brendan
 
T McGibney said:
"The aim is to increase personal accountability and transparency when such cases are taken."
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I'm not sure there will be much of a difference. A retired relative with time and expertise on his hands is busy with a residents' association right now putting in some objection to something nearby. It will be a very high-quality submission I am quite sure, ticking all the relevant boxes and devoid of frivolous and irrelevant stuff.

If you ban it from being submitted by a residents' association then there will be plenty of volunteers to put it in under their own name.

In any case planners are obliged to assess submissions on their merits rather than by the volume of support.
 
T McGibney said:
"The aim is to increase personal accountability and transparency when such cases are taken."

Proper order.
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I completely disagree. If the objection has come from the Residents Group, how does this translate to a lack of accountability or transparency?
The complaints should be assessed on their merits. It seems pretty obvious to me this is being done because of the quality of submissions from those groups, not for any of the spurious reasons you have listed.
 
Of course the impetus for this overhaul is the corruption discovered in an bord planeala, the solution (ala the fas scandal a decade ago) is a name change and rebranding . I think it will be called The Planning Commission or the Irish equivalent name. Probably be a load of advertising around the new name so that "An bord planeala " gets wiped from the public consciousness
 
odyssey06 said:
I completely disagree. If the objection has come from the Residents Group, how does this translate to a lack of accountability or transparency? The complaints should be assessed on their merits. It seems pretty obvious to me this is being done because of the quality of submissions from those groups, not for any of the spurious reasons you have listed.
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You're obviously unaware of the historic corruption of residents associations in Dublin by vested interest developers keen to stymie rivals' plans?
 
T McGibney said:
You're obviously unaware of the historic corruption of residents associations in Dublin by vested interest developers keen to stymie rivals' plans?
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Strangely the article doesn't mention anything along those lines. Unless 'cake sales' is code for something.

Apparently it has something to do with cake sales:
Fianna Fáil TD John Lahart told the Dáil in September that certain residents’ associations had discovered that judicial review cases could be financed with the proceeds of “10 cake sales”.


Either the complaint has merit to it, or it does not. The residents associations don't decide the outcome of the complaint.

How many of the reviews brought by residents association were upheld? It seems to be a significant number. So what legitimate purpose is therefore served by removing such a pathway which has lead to the vindication of rights and process?

All the more important given the corruption found in state bodies who either through bribery or ineptitude failed to discharge their duties which forced people to take such steps to vindicate their rights.
 
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odyssey06 said:
Strangely the article doesn't mention anything along those lines. Unless 'cake sales' is code for something.
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The fact that the article doesn't mention an obvious corruption risk that this new measure negates is frankly none of my concern.
 
Residents Associations were no problem back in the Celtic Tiger when we were building 50-60,000 houses a year at one point. It's just more interference in housing which will have minimal impact.

Bring in the Kenny Report recommendations around land valuations and hit big landowners and Developers rather than going after the local residents. Penalise development land hoarders.
But when did any Irish Govt go after the big guns?
 
Could a side effect/unintended consequence of this move be that the residents' association still prepare the planning submission and then each individual member just sends their own individual copy (maybe altered minimally) thus swamping the system?
 
ClubMan said:
Could a side effect/unintended consequence of this move be that the residents' association still prepare the planning submission and then each individual member just sends their own individual copy (maybe altered minimally) thus swamping the system?
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Good call! But isn't there a fee for sending in a submission or has that been done away with? If there is, then I suspect that some of the residents will be too mean! (Of course, maybe the new legislation could introduce a large fee for submissions from Residents Associations!)
 
Delboy said:
Residents Associations were no problem back in the Celtic Tiger when we were building 50-60,000 houses a year at one point. It's just more interference in housing which will have minimal impact.

Bring in the Kenny Report recommendations around land valuations and hit big landowners and Developers rather than going after the local residents. Penalise development land hoarders.
But when did any Irish Govt go after the big guns?
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End government interference but go after the developers. Contradiction much?
 
In my experience the people on residents associations are a self selecting group of pearl-clutching busybodies and NIMBY's but the problem here is the inefficient way in which the State deals with planning objections, not how annoying residents association members are. The solution is to make the process more efficient rather than limiting the number of objections. This is a typical State Sector response to the inability of the State to reliver services efficiently.
 
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