Vol. 554 No. 5
1595 Mr. Deasy asked the Minister for the Environment and Local Government the efforts being made to ensure that appeals to An Bord Pleanála which involve a sizeable number of jobs are dealt with instantly; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17380/02]
To enable An Bord Pleanála to deal with appeals, including cases involving a sizeable number of jobs, significant extra staffing and financial resources have been made available to the board in recent years. Board membership has doubled from six in 1998 to the current membership of 12; the authorised staffing complement increased by 29 in 2000 and by a further four in 2001 to a current level of 138; 79 planners have been engaged on a fee-per-case basis to provide reports on the smaller types of appeals; seven consultancy firms have been engaged to provide reports on larger cases; and a panel of consultants has been set up to hold hearings in relation to motorway schemes, compulsory purchase orders and other procedures devolved to the board under the Planning and Development Act, 2000.
The board accords priority to cases involving development with significant employment generating potential, large scale residential developments – 30 units or more – and cases involving significant infrastructural development. It has a special project team to deal with large scale residential developments and considerable progress has been made in reducing the backlog of such cases.
With regard to the general workload of the board, the backlog of cases has been substantially reduced this year, from 2,700 at the end of 2000 to less than 1,600 cases at the end of September 2002. The board has stated its confidence that the entire backlog will have been cleared by end November 2002 to a sustainable ongoing level of 1,500 cases on hand. It is anticipated that once the backlog has cleared there will be a marked improvement in the percentage of cases determined within the statutory objective period.
I am also advised by the board, now that the backlog has been virtually eliminated, that it is considering further measures for the future to ensure that its priority system is made as effective as possible so as to ensure that decisions are made in a timely manner and consistent with a full examination of all relevant planning issues.
Planning appeals necessarily take some time to process because the principles of natural justice and statutory provisions require the board to give each party an opportunity to comment on the views of the other parties in the appeal and to give full consideration to all such views and to the report and recommendation of its inspector. The Planning Act, 2000, sets an objective of appeals being determined within 18 weeks of receipt. I shall continue to monitor the performance of the board so that it meets or exceeds this objective in the vast majority of cases as soon as possible.
To ensure that the board is organised to discharge its responsibilities efficiently, a full independent review of the board's organisation and staffing has been carried out. The draft report on the review was submitted to the board in July 2002. The review examined the board's management structures and practices to ensure that they are appropriate to the functions and volume of work facing the board. Following consultation with staff interests, I expect that the review will be submitted to me by the board in the near future. I will consider carefully the board's proposals for the future organisation, staffing and resourcing of the board with a view to ensuring that optimum performance is achieved.
