The chairman of An Bord Pleanála, Mr John O'Connor, has criticised "misguided" perceptions that the appeals board is to blame for holding up major infrastructure projects.
"There is no backlog. Things have improved rapidly, and nothing is being held up," he told The Irish Times yesterday after the board issued its annual report for 2002.
Asked if he was implicitly criticising proposals to establish a National Infrastructure Board to expedite major projects, Mr O'Connor said: "It really wouldn't be my business to attack the Government."
He had "nothing at all against looking at improved systems", but the record showed that the transfer in 2001 of jurisdiction to An Bord Pleanála for the approval of infrastructure projects was a "major improvement".
In his statement introducing the report the chairman said the board was "acutely aware of the importance of discharging these cases promptly to ensure that planning delays do not disrupt capital programmes".
He was "satisfied that in general the national roads programme has not been affected by delays in the board", and said he believed that any review would show the benefit of subjecting major projects to independent assessment.
Noting that the rate of legal challenges to decisions on infrastructure projects was much higher than for planning appeals, Mr O'Connor said this raised "considerable" potential for delays in securing final planning clearance for such projects.
On planning appeals, the board was "hitting 80 per cent" of decisions within the 18-week statutory period, even for large housing schemes and Strategic Development Zone plans such as Adamstown in west Dublin.
There was a significant drop in the number of large housing schemes in 2002, probably due to developers bringing forward planning applications in advance of the introduction of Part V of the 2000 Act on affordable housing.
The number of cases determined by the board last year reached almost 5,900. This was the highest ever achieved by a significant margin, representing a 15 per cent increase on the record output of decisions in 2001.
Last year's intake of cases declined by 16 per cent, reflecting the downturn in economic growth and also the disruption in the planning system arising from the changeover to the 2000 Planning Act, which took effect in March 2002.
This year the rate of intake is running on a par with last year, and the number of cases on hand has stabilised at a level that would allow the board to achieve its strategic target of determining 90 per cent of cases within the statutory period.
The proportion of local authority decisions reversed on appeal increased from 29 per cent in 2001 to 33 per cent in 2002. This was due almost entirely to "a tendency on the part of the board to give greater weight to national policies".
This was particularly true for both wind farms and telecommunications masts where the board reversed local authority decisions in 29 per cent and 31 per cent of cases respectively for reasons relating to national policies in these areas.
There was also a much higher rate of reversal - 76 per cent - of decisions to grant permission for one-off houses in rural areas, with the board citing pollution risks, traffic hazards, visual amenity and local development plan provisions.
The proportion of appeals in which the planning inspector's recommendation was reversed by the board, at 11 per cent, was generally in line with the historical pattern.