The outgoing chairman of An Bord Pleanála has said his greatest regret is that the board did not take a stronger stand against poorly designed and remotely located housing schemes based on “bad zoning”.
At the end of 11 years at the helm of Irish planning, John O’Connor said the appeals board had rejected many such schemes, “often in the teeth of local and media criticism, but it did permit some “which with hindsight it might have refused.”
Delivering his valedictory address at the Irish Planning Institute’s annual conference, just a month before stepping down, he said: “Perhaps a few shopping developments that were too large or too remote from town/city centres got through.”
It was “undeniable that the centres of some of our cities and towns have been badly affected by the flight of retailing” to such out-of-town centres. He said the Retail Planning Guidelines and decisions made by the board had “prevented a much worse situation”.
He described the new motorway network, much of it approved by An Bord Pleanála in the face of considerable opposition, as “one of the lasting benefits of the Celtic Tiger era” and said the board had sought to protect it against “piggy back” local development.
Mr O’Connor noted many sections of Irish society were now in the process of “evaluating how things were done in the past and how matters can be improved for the future” and said planners “must participate fully in this national reappraisal”.
He said the choice of location for major public or private sector projects “should have a much stronger planning input. Mr O’Connor Planners should be part of the site selection process, and not seen as people to be brought in to make the planning application afterwards, Mr O'Connor said.
Given Ireland’s diminished resources, Mr O’Connor said planning had a crucial part to play in national recovery.