The Minister for Housing, Noel Ahern, has said that local authorities are going to have to spend more time and greater effort on the enforcement of the planning laws.
Speaking to the Planning Institute in Mullingar this morning, Mr Ahern said recent cases had highlighted the problem with the lack of enforcement.
He said that local authority officials and planners had been under extraordinary pressures because of the increased number of planning applications in recent years.
However, he said he was confident more resources would now be given towards enforcing the planning laws and regulation.
Mr Ahern also rejected suggestions from the Planning Institute that the Government’s National Spatial Strategy was going off the rails.
The IPI’s President, Iain Douglas, told the conference earlier that the recent decisions on decentralising Government departments had effectively undermined the NSS.
Ahern rejects IPI claims
Mr Douglas claimed the Government was sacrificing the National Spatial Strategy to political expediency, and said the country's planning agenda was still being driven by short-term perspectives.
However, Mr Ahern said this was untrue and that all of the areas where Government departments are going will be included in the strategy in future years.
