I thank the Chair for the invitation to appear before the committee. I was appointed interim chairperson of An Bord Pleanála in January this year, having been appointed to the board by the Minister in December 2022. I am accompanied by deputy chairperson, Mr. Chris McGarry, and Ms. Bríd Hill, chief officer. An Bord Pleanála’s core function is to be the independent appellate body for planning applications and the primary decision-making body for major public and private infrastructure proposals, both onshore and in our marine environment. The board’s mission is: "To play our part as an independent national body in an impartial, efficient and open manner, to ensure that physical development and major infrastructure projects in Ireland respect the principles of sustainable development, including the protection of the environment." I will add that we also need to address the consequences of climate change in our decisions.
Following my appointment by the Government as interim chairperson in January 2023, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, appointed Mr. McGarry as deputy chairperson. I am delighted to say he has recently decided to reappoint him for a further term, which is good for continuity and corporate knowledge at board level. An additional 11 board members were appointed, all but one on an interim one-year basis, between January and April 2023, bringing the total number of board members to the statutory limit of 15. The increased capacity at board level will allow the board to work towards reducing the backlog of work that has built up over the previous two years, restoring timely decision-making with a view to reversing the downward trend in statutory objective period, SOP, compliance. I apologise for the many acronyms in An Bord Pleanála's work. If I start saying things members do not understand, please stop me. Timely filling of any future vacancies at board level and the appointment of permanent board members who will replace the public servants, such as myself, who have been appointed on an interim basis, will be necessary to ensure this. I am working closely with the Department to ensure that.
At the end of June, the board had a staffing complement of 221, of whom one third work within the planning inspectorate. More than half the staff of the board have been working in it for less than five years. The board has sanction from the Department to grow its staffing complement to 313 by the end of year, inclusive of 15 board members. We have run, and are running, competitions to recruit the staff we need, have a number of job offers out with people and intend to issue others soon. We will shortly prepare a further strategic workforce plan to submit to the Department in respect of 2024.
In 2022, the number of planning cases received was 6% fewer than in 2021, decreasing to 3,058 from 3,251. However, the total number of cases decided in 2022 was 2,115, a 23% decrease on the previous year of 2,775. By year end, the compliance rate for our statutory timelines for taking decisions on appeals stood at 46%. By the end of May, it was at 31%. Currently, 3,400 cases are on hand in the board awaiting analysis or decision, which is roughly a year’s intake. Of those, 1,100 have inspectors’ files discharged and are awaiting a decision by the board, which as the committee knows, now sits in meetings of a minimum of three members.
The situation has been significantly improved through the board last week doing what is known colloquially as a “blitz” on decisions, specifically of the normal planning appeal files. While these are smaller files, generally involving extensions or modifications to existing buildings, or one-off houses, they are very important. First, from a corporate perspective, they comprise a large part of the workload of the board, and were about a quarter of the files awaiting decision. Second, from the perspective of those who need our services, they are the key decisions to allow families put an extra bedroom into a roof space to meet the needs of a growing family, to provide an extra house in the garden, thereby using built-up land more sustainably for housing or for small businesses to improve the layout of their properties or to grow in line with their business needs.
I will depart slightly from my script. The board issued more than 135 decisions last week, which is a little over 10% of our on-hands decisions. In fact, we took approximately 181 decisions but there is a lag before those orders issue. They will now issue this week. Many people will see their cases decided and will get their orders this week, which will be great. A number of those were within the 18-week SOP period for taking decisions so some people, although regrettably not enough, have received the service from the board that they are entitled to expect. I anticipate that the board will repeat this approach of running multiple concurrent meetings dealing with many smaller files a number of times this year. However, it is not possible for the board members, who need time to read files thoroughly in advance and to write up their decisions afterwards, to do that every week nor is it possible to treat the larger case files, which require substantial time to read and decide, in that way.
Members will also appreciate that to manage our backlog while trying to move back into greater SOP compliance, the board has moved away from dealing with cases in strict chronological order and will apply differing prioritisation to its caseload. That is necessary in any case to ensure that we meet the statutory timeline for handling appeals for large-scale residential developments, LRDs, where otherwise the board would be subject to making a payment to the developer.
The board also has approximately 275 files where applications were made directly to the board relating to larger infrastructure, local authority or State cases. These can take substantial time to analyse.
In addition, at the end of May, some 76 strategic housing development, SHD, files remain with the board, of which 27 have inspector’s reports discharged and are awaiting a board decision. While dealing with the backlog will be a significant challenge, the increase in board membership, together with a number of other initiatives, including new efficiencies in the process used and the use of fee-per-case inspectors and overtime schemes, I anticipate the overall output of decisions will continue to increase throughout the second half of 2023.
An Bord Pleanála faces an increasing case load of judicial reviews, JRs, relating to its decisions. In the first five months of this year, 25 board decisions have been the subject of new JR applications. The board is, of course, still managing a few hundred JRs taken in the past few years. The recent appointment of a new head of legal services, overseeing an expanding in-house legal unit and the procurement of additional external legal supports, will help to ensure the board is better capable of absorbing changes in its legal environment due to legislation or precedent setting decisions and, therefore, making more legally robust decisions.
The significant new functions assigned to the board in legislation in the past few years are starting to impact the board’s workload. The board has restructured its inspectorate team into two groups dealing respectively with direct applications and appeals to ensure it can deal effectively with its existing and new infrastructure consent functions. A second director of planning has been appointed to oversee direct applications, including marine and climate planning. The first round of pre-application discussions on five climate-related marine projects under the Maritime Area Planning Act 2021 has been done.
In addition, 600 valid appeals relating to residentially zoned land tax under section 80 of the Finance Act 2021 were received in one week in May of this year and will require to be processed quickly. Those appeals comprise approximately 16% of our on-hands workload.
There are several priorities for the board for this year. Those include to reduce the backlog of work and restore timely decision-making to appeals and applications made to the board; to manage the new functions now assigned to the board; and to work through the actions set out in the board’s implementation plan, which we drew up in response to the recommendations in the Minister’s action plan for An Bord Pleanála and both reports by the Office of the Planning Regulator, OPR. One of the most important initial actions we prioritised was to draw up and promulgate a strengthened code of conduct for board members and staff. I am happy to report that the new draft code was formally adopted by the board last week. Our other priorities are to work with the Department on the new planning legislation, in particular as it applies to the board, and starting the internal change process needed to move to the new governance model; and to recruit the people the board needs to carry out its critical national mission, including the permanent board members who will replace the public servants like myself who have been appointed on an interim basis. I thank my fellow public servants for volunteering to come to the board to help the organisation in this difficult period.
I am happy to take any questions the members of the committee may have.