The Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, has unveiled plans for the restructuring of An Bord Pleanala and changes to planning legislation. The moves are aimed at streamlining and speeding up planning procedures for major infrastructural projects. The proposals were signed off by Cabinet yesterday, and were published this afternoon.
Publication of the new proposals follows the withdrawal from Cabinet last year of plans to set up a wholly new planning authority, separate from An Bord Pleanala, to deal with major infrastructure projects.
That plan had been opposed at Cabinet by amongst others, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell. He had objected to the inclusion of incinerators in the previous proposals. Dublin City Council is planning to build an incinerator in the Minister's constituency, at Ringsend in Dublin.
The revised plans include the establishment of a permanent Strategic Infrastructure Division within An Bord Pleanala, which will handle decisions on major infrastructure projects. The board's powers to decide on road and other big local authority projects will also be widened to allow it make decisions on railways, gas pipelines and electricity transmission lines.
Large private sector transport, environmental and energy project proposals will be referred directly to the board by local authority managers, and will now require planning permission. It is also proposed that the board will be more proactive at the early stages of planning for these projects, in order to ensure that Environmental Impact Statements include and deal with matters of concern from the start.
Minister Roche said the new division to be set up in An Bord Pleanala to deal with major infrastructural projects would cover incinerators. But he added that the incinerator planned for Ringsend will most likely have gone through the planning process before the new legislation takes affect.
In a bid to cut delays to major infrastructure projects caused by legal challenges to planning decisions, Minister Roche has asked the Minister for Justice to consult the courts system, to find a way to ensure cases are heard earlier, and decisions are speeded up. One possibility under consideration is that recent changes to the management of commercial cases coming before the High Court could be extended to cover this area.
The Minister said the proposals would ensure the correct balance between individual rights and the national interest. Drafting of the required legislation is to begin immediately. More than €20 billion worth of transport infrastructure projects already proposed, such as the Metro to Dublin Airport and a number of motorway projects, will be covered by the changes.
Employers' organisation IBEC welcomed the new proposals, but expressed concern that they would have limited impact unless accompanied by measures to tackle legal challenges to planning decisions.
The Chambers of Commerce of Ireland also welcomed the move. 'We agree with the Minister that expanding An Bord Pleanála is likely to be a more cost-effective solution to the problem than establishing a separate fast-track planning authority and any associated costs, we hope, will be offset by the savings on the costs of legal challenges,' said chief executive John Dunne.
