Sir, – The dramatic year-on-year decline in planning permissions in the third quarter (Q3) of 2022 reported by the Central Statistics Office can be explained by the failure of An Bord Pleanála to adjudicate on strategic housing developments (SHDs) (“Large decline in planning permissions for new homes”, Business, December 10th).
For example, the board failed to make decisions on some 34 SHD applications in Co Dublin alone whose decisions fell due between July and the end of September, 2022. The long-overdue SHD decisions include the Central Mental Hospital Site (957 apartments) and the Dundrum Village proposal (881 apartments). The situation in Q4 of 2022 will likely show an even greater year-on-year decline in residential permissions. On current evidence, the board will again fail to make the required SHD decisions, along with the ever growing backlog of normal planning appeals.
No doubt there will be some political uplift during 2023 when the board resolves its current difficulties and the overdue SHD decisions are finally made.
Whether the developers will have the enthusiasm to proceed then with their delayed developments is an entirely different question. – Yours, etc,
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KEVIN CULLEN,
Sandyford,
Dublin 18.
Sir, – Just when one thought one had heard every excuse – and seen all entities available to be scapegoated identified – for the Government’s housing policy failures, your headline tells us that Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien and his advisers have found yet another, the residents’ associations (“Resident groups to be barred from taking High Court actions against planning decisions”, News, December 12th). One has to wonder is this the final scrapings of the barrel.
But those who advise the Government on these matters should know that a scapegoat only remains effective for the length of time people believe in its guilt.
I seriously know of not a single person who thinks that such groups played any role in the creation of the housing crisis or are in any way blocking the Government from solving the crisis.
Indeed many people will see these latest plans that will hamper the right of citizens to engage in the planning process as nothing other than those who do well on the back of current Government housing policy taking the opportunity presented by the crisis to have the rules of the game changed to their own advantage.
Is our democracy being hollowed out to preserve the status quo? – Yours, etc,
JIM O’SULLIVAN,
Rathedmond,
Sligo.