New infrastructure power for Bord Pleanála

@environ.ie wrote:

“New system to deliver infrastructure decisions more quickly”

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Mr. Dick Roche T.D., today (1 June, 2005) announced proposals to restructure An Bord Pleanála and amend the 2000 Planning Act to bring about greater efficiency in the consent process for major infrastructure projects ensuring robust analysis of proposals, greater certainty on the time frame for delivering decisions. The objective is to contribute to the delivery of high quality infrastructure which will improve people’s quality of life while respecting our environment. The Government has also decided to make parallel changes to procedures for judicial review of decisions on infrastructure, to ensure that protracted delays cannot happen in the courts.

“Ireland badly needs new and improved infrastructure across a number of areas, to tackle bottlenecks in our economy and to improve every citizen’s quality of life. Every delay in taking a decision or arising from excessive delay in dealing with a court challenge to a decision adds to the costs of providing that infrastructure. Those delays rarely mean that the decision taken is a better one, just that the construction is more expensive because time has passed. We need to have a system that delivers the right infrastructure in the right place with the minimum of impact on the community and the environment.”

The Minister announced a number of complementary proposals:

An Bord Pleanála will be restructured to establish a new, permanent Strategic Infrastructure Division which will handle decisions on all major infrastructure projects.

The Board’s role will be extended to include decisions on railways, gas pipelines and electricity transmission lines. They currently oversee planning decisions for major roads/motorways and other big projects proposed by local authorities.
Major transport, environmental and energy projects proposed by the private sector that are of strategic importance will be referred directly to the Board by the local manager and will not need local planning permission.

The Board will take on a more proactive role at the early stages of planning such projects in ensuring that the Environmental Impact Statements deal with all relevant matters so that mitigation measures can be addressed and in identifying the key planning issues .
The Minister noted that people were entitled to expect that any impacts of proposed infrastructure on the local environment or community will be robustly assessed. At the same time there is an expectation that major infrastructure projects must be decided on speedily and within a reasonably certain framework. “My proposals are designed to ensure the correct balance between individual rights and the national interest. We will also be in full compliance with Ireland’s EU and international legal obligations in relation to consideration of environmental and heritage impacts and consultation with the public,” the Minister said.

The Minister stated that he was building on the strengths of the Board who have transformed their record on delivering planning decisions over the last 5 years. “We may not agree with every decision the Board takes every time. But the Board consistently give an excellent service to the country in assessing planning proposals. They have also increased their productivity enormously in recent years to eliminate the backlog in planning appeal decisions, at the same time that they took on the role of deciding on major local authority projects. I am confident that they will be well-equipped to undertake this new role and will be working with them over the next few months to deliver the changes needed.”

Drafting of the Planning Bill needed to underpin these changes will begin immediately. The legislation will be published in a few months.

The Minister noted that a lot of the most protracted delays to decisions on infrastructure in recent years have been due to legal challenges. The Government has therefore decided that, as well as changes to the planning system, we need to tackle delays in the courts. “My colleague, Minister McDowell will be examining ways in consultation with the Courts to ensure that cases get heard earlier and that court decisions are made quickly. This is not about trying to stop genuine legal challenges. What we need is mechanisms to ensure that cases are heard and decided as soon as possible so that everybody knows whether the infrastructure project can proceed or not. Minister McDowell will be building on recent changes to commercial case management in the High Court and seeing how those new rules can be extended to cover challenges to infrastructure projects.”

The devil will be in the detail;

The adding of Rail projects to the list is welcome, the removal of Local Authority input is a disaster as the deciding planners will not all be familiar with the areas they are dealing with.

Re: Legal Challenges that would require a number of Constitutional amendments to be fully effective.

If it were that simple it would have been done a long time ago, it is a soundbite from Roche and little else in my opinion.

I am wondering why incinerators have been included but the as yet undesigned Ringsend Incinerator will be too late for the new legislation as the Ringsend incinerator will have already entered the planning system.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0601/planning.html

Roche to make changes to planning legislation

01 June 2005 17:04
The Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, has unveiled plans for the restructuring of An Bord Pleanála and for changes to planning legislation.

The plans are aimed at streamlining and speeding up planning procedures for major infrastructural projects.

A permanent Strategic Infrastructure Division is to be established within An Bord Pleanála, and the board’s powers to decide on road and other big local authority projects are to be widened.

It is also proposed that large private sector transport, environmental and energy project proposals will be dealt with directly by the board and will not require planning permission.

Incinerators

Mr Roche also said that the new division will cover incinerators.

However, he added that the incinerator planned for Ringsend in Dublin, which is in the constituency of the Minister of Justice, will most likely have gone through the planning process before the new leglisation takes effect.

The minister said the proposals would ensure the correct balance between individual rights and the national interest.

Drafting of the required legislation is to begin immediately.

More than €20 billion worth of transport infrastructure projects already proposed – such as the Metro to Dublin Airport and a number of motorway projects – will be covered by the changes.

That is exactly what is likely to happen, the Rinsend Incinerator will take the best part of 18 months in the process either way and there is a precedence of the board throwing them out first time so that they come back in a more refined form. We now have a situation where one TD from a party with 8 seats effectively controls what does and doesn’t get built; that is hardly democracy.

In relation to the Courts I see the point you are making with the Commercial Court which has been very successful in that it has ensured a certain amount of court time for purely commercial cases that previously could have been leapfrogged by criminal or life & death civil matters. But the law is still the law and unless radically amended another set of ministerial regulations or a hastily drafted bill will be of little use at disarming centuries of legal precedent.