ARTICLE: Time for the Planning Tribunals to come to Cork?

Rebeller

While many of us may be suffering from Tribunal fatigue at the moment how many of you out there would be in favour of extending the Planning Tribunal's terms of reference to include (possibly suspect) planning decisions taken in the Cork area over the past 10 years?

As a long term resident of Cork I have witnessed many inexplicable land rezoning decisions being made often involving overturning the rulings of the County's senior planning officer and An Bord Pleanála.

The most recent suspect decision is outlined in the below article from Village Magazine

Village Magazine

The story was also covered in the Irish Times last week.

My own opinion is that planning in this country and in particular in the Cork and Dublin areas is highly corrupt with very questionable land rezoning and planning decisions being made that will negatively impact the lives of thousands of people for decades to come while benefiting the same tired old group of wealthy developers/builders.

A perfect example of the consequences of corrupt planning is the traffic chaos that prevailed in Dublin on Wednesday afternoon/evening: vast tracts of land rezoned and planning permission for sprawling estates with no consideration given to infrastructural needs or societal impact.

Opinions please.

Glenbhoy

The planning tribunal was never restricted to north county dublin, people only thought that, and obviously no-one was ever going to let that out - the bloody things would never end then!

Lennoxschips

Things like Dunnes Stores at the Bandon Road roundabout and Mahon Point Shopping Centre should certainly be looked into. It's either corruption or incompetence that lead to those being built, either way it should be sorted out.

Rebeller

Glenbhoy wrote:

The planning tribunal was never restricted to north county dublin, people only thought that, and obviously no-one was ever going to let that out - the bloody things would never end then!

The current terms of reference (available at below website) limit the Tribunals investigative scope to:

"The identification of the lands stated to be 726 acres in extent, referred to in the letter dated 8th June, 1989 from Mr. Michael Bailey to Mr. James Gogarty (reproduced in the schedule herewith) and the establishment of the beneficial ownership of the lands at that date and changes in the beneficial ownership of the lands since the 8th June, 1989 prior to their development"

Terms of Reference

The Tribunals remit would therefore seem to be limited to a specific geographical area as it is restricted to looking into the dealing of specific parcels of land.

My own view is that a nationwide inquiry into the operation of the planning system is needed. This could only be achieved with very clear cut rules as regards fees to be charged, right to legal representation etc.

Nothing has changed as regards the willingness of corrupt and venal county and city public reps and officials to accept relatively small bribes in return for ludicrous planning and land rezoning decisions that result in a screwing of the general populace for years to come.

There needs to be an outright and absolute ban on all private "donations" (whether from a company or individuals) to both political parties and individual public representatives.

All political parties should be funded from an independently managed central fund with pay outs being determined by performance of each party at a reference general election.

It could then be made an offence to knowingly and purposely attempt or actually give money to a public representative acting in their official capacity. The accepting of any such "donation" would also be an offence punishable by a relatively severe term of imprisonment or heavy fine (3-5 years and up to €20,000 perhaps).

Planning corruption and general gombeenism is still alive and well and will not go away unless there is a committed and willful determination on the part of the people and those in power to stamp it out.

Most major social, environmental and economic problems facing Ireland today can (in my opinion) be traced back to this continuing gombeenism and corruption.

muffler

I'd say you could probably look for the planning tribunal work to extend to every county (Leitrim aside:D )

Anyway we have a more important tribunal here in Donegal

Glenbhoy

Rebeller wrote:

The Tribunals remit would therefore seem to be limited to a specific geographical area as it is restricted to looking into the dealing of specific parcels of land.

These were the original terms of reference, however this module was finished years ago, the tribunal whilst working on this, discovered other irregularities, notably Dunlop, at that stage the terms of reference were amended to include planning corruption anywhere in the country. However, from reading their site, it seems that since April '05, no new investigations can be started, that's probably all part of the governments plan to get the thing closed up before it does some damage to any current big hitters. Imagine, if people all around the country had known about this, it's likely there'd have been quite a few casualties at high levels, from all parties!
There's nothing stopping you sending the details of the possible wrongdoing into the planning tribunal anyway, sure what's the worst they can do?
All that said, there's a lot of sense in your other proposals rebeller.