Nothing emerged in a senior barrister’s investigation into An Bord Pleanála governance to call into question the outcome in any of the 175 planning files she examined for conflicts of interest or bias, the body’s chairman has said.
Peter Mullan was speaking as he released summary conclusions from an investigation by senior counsel Lorna Lynch who was asked two years ago to investigate “matters of concern” in the planning body.
The only issue which Ms Lynch said called for a referral to the Minister for Housing for “stated misbehaviour” was the question of incorrect statutory declarations that had already led to the conviction of former Pleanála deputy chairman Paul Hyde.
“She has engaged with the evidence and those are the conclusions that she has come to,” Mr Mullan said in reply to questions about her findings.
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“It’s clear to me that her report has answered many of the reputational questions that existed over the board,” he told The Irish Times in an interview on Sunday.
Mr Mullan said An Bord Pleanála faced an “existential crisis” in 2022 when facing claims of impropriety in some of its work.
“In answer to your direct question in relation to ‘Were there any files that she reviewed that there were any question marks over the decision?’, the answer is no to that, an unequivocal no,” he said.
Alleged personal relationships were among questions under investigation in case files for any conflicts of interest and any actual or objective bias.
These included an unnamed board member’s involvement as a decision-maker in planning applications when they had a “familial relationship” with a company director involved in the application. Ms Lynch found there were not sufficient grounds to make a referral to the Minister on such questions.
The same finding was made on the alleged allocation of files by an unnamed board member to an unnamed board employee they were alleged to have been in a personal relationship with. The board member concerned was not involved in allocating files to a particular inspector, the report found.
Asked whether the authority had erred by allowing a major crisis to develop, Mr Mullan said that was not the case.
“I think there was concerted attempt by one particular board member to shift the culture and norms of An Bord Pleanála away from those that have been in place for quite considerable years and that brought the board to the point of crisis that it reached in ‘22,” he said, without naming anyone particularly.
On the question of whether Ms Lynch’s findings meant the board was clean, Mr Mullan said: “Clearly the issues that arose and were reported on extensively during 2022 led to a serious reputational difficulty for the board. I think the very existence of the board was in question during that period.”
He added: “Clearly some of the issues that arose ... led to significant governance concerns around the structure of the board and perhaps how at that time the existing governance structure was not serving the board at its best and those changes are reflected in the new legislation.”
Asked if it would be better to publish the entire report instead of summary findings, he cited “strong” legal advice. “I would be foolish in the extreme and it would be unwise for me to expose the board to potential legal proceedings.”
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