The Government has dropped its plan to block legal challenges to major infrastructural projects once they have been cleared by the proposed new super planning authority.
The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government abandoned the proposal to impose such restrictions after a series of consultations with the Attorney General, Mr Rory Brady, The Irish Times has learned.
Senior Department of the Environment officials told the Irish Business Employers' Confederation late last month that such changes, if attempted, would fall foul of the Constitution.
"We are quite frustrated. They told us that they had taken advice and that the Attorney General said it couldn't be done," Mr Reg McCabe, IBEC's director of transport, told The Irish Times.
The National Infrastructure Board was heavily emphasised by both the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, during last October's Fianna Fáil Ardfheis in Killarney, Co Kerry.
The two said then, and since, that the board would rule on developments judged to be "a national priority", including the proposed Dublin metro, motorways, electricity networks, incinerators and landfills.
Under Mr Cullen's plans, the National Infrastructure Board, acting "as a one-stop shop", will rule on major projects such as motorways, incinerators and power stations within approximately three months, The Irish Times understands. The strict timetable will be dramatically faster than the current system where An Bord Pleanála and local authorities can often take two years, and more to reach decisions.
Meanwhile, the Minister will impose strict limits on the time available to lodge appeals to planning applications lodged with the proposed super planning authority.
Under the Planning and Development Act, 2000, the Government allowed just five weeks to the public to lodge planning objections, and demanded a €20 fee for each one.
The change caused a 20 per cent drop in the number of planning appeals lodged with local authorities last year, compared with 2001. A total of 31,849 were received in the year to June 2003, as against 39,880.
Under the legislation due to go before the Cabinet in three weeks, the Minister will bar people from launching legal challenges to decisions of the board unless they had objected in time.
However, the new planning authority's three-month clock will not begin to examine a planning application until developers have satisfactorily completed all environmental and planning paperwork.
The Department of the Environment last night refused to comment on the Minister's plans, except to say: "All of these matters will be discussed with the Cabinet.
"Obviously the key focus of this legislation is to bring definitiveness to projects so that people know where they are, subject to full public consultation and environmental standards," a spokesman declared.
Urging a bar on legal challenges, Mr McCabe said: "If there is a constitutional issue here it would be better to test it, bring in the legislation and let the President refer it to the Supreme Court." Major infrastructure projects are now at risk from "judicial intervention", he warned. "The possibility of legal delays has to be factored into every project in the country.
"The right of appeal should be limited only to those parties who had been involved from the beginning. Multi-million projects can be stopped after planning has been granted. That is outrageous," said Mr McCabe.
During a recent visit to Ireland, the design chief of the Madrid Metro, Prof Manuel Maynar Melis, was briefed on the legal hurdles facing infrastructure development, said Mr McCabe. "In Spain and a lot of other countries similar judicial intervention is unknown," he said.
"It just would not happen in Spain. Now I am not suggesting that we do everything that they have done. Some of the things they have done are pretty horrifying, but there has to be a balance," he added.
IBEC has raised serious question marks over the powers of the board to decide which projects are of national importance, and to decide which qualifying projects should be dealt with first.
Mr McCabe said: "This could easily become an issue in situations where you have competing projects, such as power stations, or landfills, where there could be applications in from private and public operators."
