Planning delays to infrastructure

Nice one

I'm particularly happy to see the OECD being involved as their recommendations will form part of the final reports so if they don't at least give them serious consideration it'll look like a farce

Also, regarding

As highlighted in the first post on this thread, the only reason we even got those 5 was because the govt had to be shamed in the national papers into appointing them. Its also only 33% of the total qty requested so really, there should be 52 justices, not 42.

Its a step in the right direction at least

So Brukes attempts to limit the publics access to justice is dead.

As expected several challenges were made to his plans which I'm guessing painted a pretty clear picture of how likely it was to fail.

What they are doing instead is the following

1. Setting up a separate division of the high Court specifically to deal with planning and environmental cases. Once that's done it will shine a bright light on resourcing issues if they don't staff it properly.
2. Reverting back to the 2 tier approval system (1st loop through the local council, 2nd loop through ABP). The SHD process will not be used.
3. Doing an overhaul of the planning and development acts to tidy up the legislation.

All in all this is good news. No apparent dilution of rights, from the looks of it a simplified set of legislation and dedicated resources.

The only one that has me a bit worried is the overhaul of the legislation. This will be the one to watch to see will Burke try to cut back on the right to appeal again. I hope not as even those with a basic understanding (myself included) will detect it and raise issues with it before it even gets through the Dail.

Absolutely

however, as regards people appealing decisions, I think its safe to say that given the volume of successful appeals against SHD projects, that the vast majority had sufficient grounds to start with.

The same can be said for challenges on environmental grounds. The amount of these that are successful is very high due to the most basic requirements not being followed.

But yeah, having appeals is not an issue if you staff the system properly. You could have an application in, reviewed, approved by council, appealed to ABP, ABP ruling, High Court appeal, all done in a matter of months if its resourced appropriately.

To be honest, a lot of these issues could be sorted right at the beginning if requirements were followed at the outset though I suspect thats where the overhaul of the legislation will be of benefit

So after all the promises of a proper reform of planning laws without impacting access to justice, the govt have, in a roundabout way, took aim at rights to access justice. In all likelihood this bill will end up before the courts and will end up being quashed, resulting in it going back to square one again. To give you and idea, the bill itself is 18 pages, but the amendments run to 48 pages.

The bill in question

A good review of what the govt are it

Another very good article on it which concludes that this is going to cause more problems than fix and will likely have to be rewritten again if its not killed by the courts

Also a long twitter thread on it below by Solicitor Joe Noonan covering the period when it made it to the floor of the Dail

Referenced by both, comments by the Chief Justice, Frank Clarke in 2018 when speaking about planning, the courts, delays etc

One amendment did get killed, the one where a judicial review might be taken against ABP, ABP could, at any point (even hours before a court ruling) change their original decision to whatever they want thereby nullifying the reason for the case against them. A particularly sly move that would have severely curtailed access to justice.

F me, there's literally no way this survives a legal challenge.

Yup, there's very few that lost.

Also it keeps being stated that there's too many JR's but there was also no other avenue to challenge a SHD application.

This is what caused huge grief for Burke the last time he tried this.

Basically it allows ABP etc, who are being challenged on a decision, to alter the decision or add conditions to the approval at any stage during a challenge thereby negating the point the challenge is based on. Its to dissuade challenges again.

You could spend thousands challenging a decision, only for it to be modified to address your challenge and then have the case thrown out.

This could happen years into a case, the day before a court rules etc and there would be no recourse for costs as the case would be voided.

It's the legal equivalent of moving the goalposts as the shot is being taken. You wouldn't bother playing if you could never score a goal. Maybe I'm stretching the analogy lol.

My point is, since O'Brien got in his objective has not been to fix any of the problems but rather make it as difficult as possible to take a case and make that option as unappealing as possible.

Gah! I keep calling him Burke, I don't know why, O'Brien I meant to say, corrected my post

Well, ABP is f0kd

I said it when it was announced, but the SHD process was always going to sink ABP and it looks like its on the verge. It got landed with the workload of 30 local councils for large developments and no extra staff to handle the workload.

Now there's a backlog of 2,300 cases of which 600 are ready to be assessed by the board while the other 1,700 not at a ready state.

There's 4 people left on the board so those 600 won't be done anytime soon

Some context

Some comments and further details

As to the impact to local communities access to justice:

If they do get this passed, it'll be killed in the Supreme or EU courts

More judges to be appointed to the courts to try assist with the backlog of cases will be in the first tranche (24) broken out as follows

• Court of Appeal to increase from 16 to 18
• High Court increases from 45 to 51
• Circuit Court increase from 38 to 46 and
• District Court increase from 64 to 72

A second tranche of 20 appointments will happen......sometime in the future, maybe. That will be broken out as follows

• High Court gets an additional 6
• Circuit Court gets an additional 6
• District Court an additional 6
• and the Court of Appeal would get an extra 2

This will take use from 173 to 217 but this still leaves wayyyyy behind the norm in Europe

The Planning Court will also be born out of these appointments

Incidentally further concerns were raised about restricting access to justice and Irelands non-compliance to the Aarhaus Convention, this time by the Irish Planning Institute in a presentation to an Oireachtas committee 

Its been flagged now by so many different groups that if the govt do plough ahead, it will most certainly end up in the courts and I can see the EU getting involved to strike it down. They don't take interference with the judicial system lightly as evidenced by them withholding billions from Poland over their shenanigans