On the meeting table in Peter Mullan’s office is a small acrylic sign, similar to those used in restaurants or pubs to indicate a space is reserved.
The sign reads: “I love my colleagues, most of the time.”
When asked about the sign, Mullan fudges his answer to what it’s all about, but it appears to be a reminder to An Coimisiún Pleanála’s chief executive that he and his colleagues are all on the same team - no matter what disagreements they have.
“It’s important to work in an environment where you get good feedback from one another, particularly at a senior leadership team, where you do challenge one another,” Mullan says.
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“I encourage people where they have different views to me, particularly at senior level, to give those different views. We’ll make decisions where we can by consensus but, on occasions, you can’t.”
Mullan, who has been with An Coimisiún Pleanála for three years now, joined from the Courts Service. He previously worked in the private sector, managing the State’s largest criminal law firm, Sheehan and Partners, before moving to the public service in 2012 to work in the Department of Justice and Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
He joined An Coimisiún Pleanála in January 2023 as a temporary board member at a time when the mood at its head office on Marlborough Street in Dublin city centre was “very low”.
The body faced turmoil for much of the previous year following a series of reports by The Ditch news website about then deputy chair Paul Hyde’s personal declarations and claims of alleged conflicts of interest.
A number of high-profile staff resigned from what was then called An Bord Pleanála in 2022, including Hyde himself. In late 2023, he received a suspended sentence and €6,000 fine over failure to declare property interests.
“2022 was a difficult year here,” Mullan says. “The mood was very low. I think a lot of the staff felt blamed for what had happened, and yet it was governance failures that caused the issues, but a number of the staff took that very personally.
“Gradually over that year, particularly that first six months, the morale in the organisation, I think, improved dramatically. Government were asked for considerable extra resources, and we got sanctioned for over 100 extra staff. We gradually started to hire those, and that has made a huge difference because our performance during that period [in 2022] went through the floor because decisions weren’t going out.”
Mullan joined the body when it was led by Oonagh Buckley, formerly a deputy secretary general of the Department of Justice. She left in June 2023 to become secretary general of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications.
Mullan was elevated to her role on an interim basis and, as part of a new structure at An Coimisiún Pleanála, now leads it as chief executive, as opposed to chairperson, after being given a seven-year term by the government in 2024.
“I came for a year, and the plan was to go back to the Courts Service. I saw myself seeing out my days in courts. I was very happy to do that, but coming over here as the decision maker was really enjoyable,” he adds.
“When I was asked to step up as the interim chair, and then I applied for the chief executive role, it was an easy decision to make. It’s a really challenging role, but unbelievably rewarding.”
The turmoil and lack of senior staff led to a large backlog of decisions to be made on planning appeals and major housing and infrastructure cases building up. At one stage, there were 3,600 cases to rule upon, three times the normal level.
Mullan says the caseload is now more or less back under control.
“There’s always going to be 1,250 to 1,300 cases in the building at any given moment, and that’s exactly what we have. We’ve got 1,358,” he adds.
“I’m happy that we’ve re-established the trust of the organisation ... where I’m most disappointed is there are still a number of historical cases, generally very complicated, that are still bumping around. We’re endeavouring to clear those out.”
There are still 150 cases from prior to 2026 in the backlog, and around 30 from before 2025. Mullan says he would like to “finish those off by the end of the year”. While he adds he is happy overall with the current caseload level, he feels it could be lower.
“There’s something happening out there, and I’m not quite sure what it is. Compared to this time last year, there has been a 13 per cent increase in both appeals and direct applications to us. It’s a very substantial increase. I think there’s more activity within the economy.”
Direct applications to build large infrastructure projects are also up 50 per cent, which Mullan says will be a “challenge” for An Coimisiún Pleanála to deal with considering the complexity of the cases.
National Development Plan review
The amount of complex projects to adjudicate on are likely to ease in the coming years. Last year, a review of the National Development Plan by the Government committed to spending €275 billion on infrastructure projects by 2035, with €100 billion of that amount due to be spent on housing, energy, water and transport projects by 2030.
Mullan says he is confident his team, which now has 310 staff, can meet the demands because, when it has required extra employees, the Government has responded with funding for the hiring required.
An Coimisiún Pleanála has done this hiring in recent years by poaching staff from local authorities and the private sector to fill its ranks.
“When we put an ad in the paper, whether it’s for planners, senior planners, administrative staff or specialists, we have no difficulty in recruiting,” Mullan says.
He adds the organisation is fortunate to be able to fill roles at a time when there is a “considerable shortage” of planners, ecologists and engineers, with everyone “essentially trying to hire from the same pool”.
An Coimisiún Pleanála’s ability to tempt staff has been met with some grievances from councils and companies losing their talent. Comments by Mullan last year about how local authority planning departments go about their work also raised some eyebrows.
Mullan told The Currency in October 2025 that the actions of some local authorities had added to his caseload.
“We’re finding that the local authorities, in our view, are not doing their job right” on some applications to build wind and solar projects, he said at the time.
He clarified that, in some appeals faced by An Coimisiún Pleanála, councils did not engage with the planning applicant sufficiently. They did not address information gaps in applications and refused the project.
Mullan says he didn’t face much heat from councils for his comments, and adds the issue persists.
“Certain wind and solar projects, when they’re appealed to us, we would have preferred if the local authority would have requested further information from the applicants.”
He says this lack of engagement has required An Coimisiún Pleanála to pick up the pieces and spend time looking for information to make a decision on an appeal.
“Historically, if there was a deficit in information or if there was something wrong, you simply refused it and let them come again. That’s not the case any more. The High Court has been very clear where there are deficits in information, we are expected to engage with the applicants and the observers to work out where the shortcomings are,” he adds.
“We’re the appellate body, we’re hoping that lower down in the decision making process that all of the appropriate exchanges of information have taken place. So if papers come to us on appeal, we have all the requisite information to make the decision.
“At the moment, there are some shortcomings there. I’ve indicated that message a number of times, and I think it has started to filter down. They’re independent in their decision-making. We’re independent in our decision-making. While we can have chats around it, we need to respect that autonomy.”
While An Coimisiún Pleanála faces pressure from an increase in its caseload and additional work on some complicated wind and solar projects coming its way from local authorities, Mullan’s operation has faced a more positive trend involving judicial reviews.
Legal challenges to decisions by the national planning authority have begun to decline. In the first half of this year, the board faced 51 judicial reviews of its decisions, compared to 88 for the equivalent period last year.
The slowdown in legal challenges began before the full measures of the Planning and Development Act 2024, a 900-page document signed into law in late 2024, came into effect. These laws, which have now come into effect, place limits on the legal costs that can be recouped by those who take judicial reviews on environmental grounds.
“Things have certainly slowed down and had started to slow down before the environmental cost scheme was introduced,” Mullan says.
He adds that the decline could be linked to “more robust” decisions being made by An Coimisiún Pleanála, but it is too early to know.
“We’re explaining better where we’re refusing and, where there are deficits of information and they need to be engaged with, we’re engaging with them.
“We also have a director of legal who, after every single [court] decision, waterfalls that right through the organisation to all our decision makers, commissioners, inspectors, so there are learnings from the High Courts where we won and lost large numbers of cases over the last numbers of years.”
Speed of legal challenges
The judicial review trend might point downwards, but Mullan says the level of legal challenges is still too high.
“It’s a very substantial number of cases and what number is the right number? I don’t know the answer to that, but I still think 51 is too many.
“Last year there was 143, and 147 the year before. Those were huge numbers, leading to huge fees, which is taxpayers money. It was about a third of our budget. We’ve been doing everything we can to both stem it and then gradually reduce it.”
He adds a further welcome development on judicial reviews has been the speed at which legal challenges are being heard for large infrastructure projects, including the Galway ring road and Galway Harbour redevelopment.
“We’re getting hearing dates in relation to the two Galway cases in November. The Planning and Environment Court has made great strides, because they’ve been resourced with three judges, whereas before you could have been waiting two to three years for a case to get on. That’s no longer the case.”
The most recent annual report for An Coimisiún Pleanála showed it spent €12.8 million on legal fees in 2024, with €6.2 million related to payment of challengers’ costs.
Mullan says legal fees last year and next year are expected to stay at the same level due to the volume of cases from the previous two years.
“We’re paying our lawyers a little bit more, because we’re probably doing more cases, but we’re starting to pay less on inter-party fees for the cases that we lose,” he adds.
“When our director of legal started in 2023, we developed a legal strategy and where we make mistakes and they are procedural mistakes, and we do make mistakes, we concede those very quickly.
“Where we continue to defend our decisions, we’ll robustly continue to do that. I think that’s starting to filter through the system. Historically, there might have been a sense that we might have conceded stuff that we didn’t need to concede. I don’t think that’s the position any more.”
CV
Name: Peter Mullan
Age: 62
Job: Chief executive of An Coimisiún Pleanála
Family: Married to Maureen with two children
Hobbies: Gardening, cooking and learning Italian
Something you might expect: Committed to the public service
Something that may surprise: “I spent the early 1990s trying to be a stand-up comedian and did many guest spots at the Comedy Cellar in The International Bar. Then I met my wife and realised I was useless.”
