Irishplanningnews.ie

The new government action plan to address the housing crises has signalled the intention to allow for applications involving more that 100 houses to be submitted directly to An Bord Pleanala. It will be very interesting to see how this will work from a practical perspective. Will An Bord Pleanala now engage with applicants as part of a pre-planning process? How will they deal with technical aspects such as traffic and water services? Normally all these issues are ironed out before an application ends up with the Board or are at least significantly advanced. How long will the Board have to make a decision given they currently take a minimum of 18 weeks? Will there be any increase in Board members which is where the real bottleneck occurs in terms of making decisions? Will there be any appeal process if the applicant is not happy with the decision or will the only recourse be a judicial review?