Since the establishment of An Bord Pleanála in 1977, planning legislation has clearly assigned final responsibility for decisions on planning appeals to the Board and not to inspectors preparing reports and making recommendations to the Board.
The number of Inspectors’ recommendations not generally accepted in the final decisions made by the Board in the period referred to is as follows, along with the percentage of these cases as a percentage of the overall number of cases decided by the Board in that year:
- 2012 - 284 (19.9%);
- 2013 - 339 (17.7%);
- 2014 - 229 (15.4%);
- 2015 - 204 (12.7%); and
- 2016 - 244 (14.8%).
This information, and other related statistics, are publically available in An Bord Pleanála's Annual Reports, which can be accessed on the following link: http://www.pleanala.ie/publications/index.htm.