An Bord Pleanála (the Board) is the national independent statutory body with responsibility for the determination of planning appeals and direct applications for strategic infrastructure and other developments under the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, and certain other Acts.
Arrangements have been put in place by all bodies under the aegis of my Department to facilitate the provision of information directly to members of the Oireachtas. This provides a speedy, efficient and cost effective system to address queries directly to the relevant bodies. The contact email address for An Bord Pleanála in this regard is Oireachtasqueries@pleanala.ie.
In order to be of assistance, my Department obtained the information requested from the Board who have provided the following information.
The Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, and associated legislation provide statutory objective timelines by which An Bord Pleanála must seek to determine cases before it. Those provisions provide for a period of 18 weeks from receipt for most normal planning appeals and 16 weeks for such appeals involving large scale residential development.
Where the initial time objective period cannot be met, the legislation provides that the Board must write out to all the parties in the particular case and advise of a new date by which the Board intends to determine the case. The Board follows these procedures in all cases.
However, it is accepted that in present circumstances, where it is currently dealing with a significant backlog of cases across a spectrum of various case types, An Bord Pleanála cannot, in a significant number of such revised date cases, meet that revised date and it is not in a position to provide definitive additional timelines to determine individual cases which have gone beyond the revised timeline given. An Bord Pleanála regrets this situation and is seeking to address the backlog of cases over the coming period.
