Thursday, 5 November 2026

Opinion: Public Service Planners, Professional Training and the Technical Grade

Why shortlisting for planners should start with a postgraduate qualification

This is an editorial from BPS Planning, issued for discussion only.

Open any recent candidate booklet for Assistant Planner and the education requirement is the same. Tipperary, Longford, Kildare and others ask for an honours degree at Level 8 on the National Framework of Qualifications in Planning, a stated period of satisfactory planning experience, and a high standard of technical training. A master’s is not required. Irish Planning Institute or Royal Town Planning Institute membership is often desirable, not essential. That wording is not a drafting quirk. It is how local authorities, under Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage circulars, now define the entry grade of a profession that once trained almost entirely at postgraduate level.

The grade those booklets fill is a technical and professional one. In local government structures, Assistant, Executive, Senior Executive and Senior Planner sit with the corresponding engineer and architect grades, not with the clerical and administrative ladder from Clerical Officer to Senior Executive Officer. From 1 June 2026, under Circular EL 04/2026 and the Public Service Agreement 2024–2026, Assistant Planner pay runs from €48,248 to €74,809 including the second long-service increment; Executive Planner from €60,858 to €84,596. Those are the same euro figures as Assistant and Executive Engineer. The technical grade is real. The question is what professional training is needed to justify it.

Ireland’s modern planning education did not begin with a four-year undergraduate degree. University College Dublin’s Regional and Urban Planning programme commenced in October 1966. The Irish Planning Institute’s own history records that the first formally educated planners trained in the Republic graduated from the College of Technology, Bolton Street, and from UCD in 1969; before that, aspirants sat Royal Town Planning Institute external examinations or studied abroad. The Institute itself was launched in November 1975. University College Cork’s Masters in Planning and Sustainable Development took its foundation class in October 2006. The undergraduate route came later. Technological University Dublin’s combined BSc in Spatial Planning and Environmental Management, under the old DIT code DT106, produced its first graduating cohort in 2005, which implies a first intake around 2001, and that programme, now TU835, is fully accredited by the Irish Planning Institute as a standalone four-year degree. UCD’s BSc in City Planning and Environmental Policy, by contrast, is IPI-accredited only when completed with the accelerated Master of Regional and Urban Planning. So the Republic’s professional tradition was postgraduate first; the accredited undergraduate pathway is real, recent, and, in TU Dublin’s case, fully recognised. I taught in the School of Spatial Planning at DIT between 2002 and 2005, in the early years of that undergraduate experiment, and I have no interest in talking down the graduates it has produced.

Many fine planners in the public service and in private practice hold a primary planning degree and no more. Experience on planning applications, at oral hearings and in forward planning teams matters, and shortlisting that ignored experience would make little sense. Nor is a Level 8 award a trivial thing. What it is not, on its own, is a complete answer to why planners are paid and graded as technical professionals rather than as administrative officers who happen to work in a planning section. Plenty of staff on administrative grades also hold primary degrees. The technical grade has to be justified by something more than that: by a depth of professional education in planning as a discipline, or by a recognised planning specialism built on top of a first degree, together with the experience the booklets already require.

Here I must be careful. It is my observation, from competitions and from conversation across the profession, that candidates with an accredited postgraduate qualification in planning sometimes lose out at interview to candidates who hold only a primary degree. I am not claiming a published pattern, and I have seen no Irish Planning Institute or union statistics that would prove one. Eligibility under the current booklets treats both as Level 8 in Planning. Interview boards then score competencies: planning policy and practice, delivering results, performance through people, personal effectiveness. On that footing, a master’s confers no automatic advantage. Whether boards undervalue postgraduate professional education is an open question. The same arrangement can also mean that candidates with a master’s or a doctorate in planning are interviewed by a board whose planning member holds a primary degree. That is no reflection on the experience and judgement of the people who sit on those boards, many of whom are excellent and senior planners. It does suggest, though, that the system has not yet decided how much weight advanced professional education should carry. That such outcomes can happen is enough to ask whether the shortlisting stage is doing the work it should.

Public appointments practice already distinguishes eligibility from shortlisting. Guidance associated with the Commission for Public Service Appointments Code of Practice, which applies to technical and professional appointments in local authorities, expects clear differentiation between essential and desirable requirements, objective criteria linked to the role, and shortlisting on essential requirements and, where appropriate, the most desirable ones. Restrictive eligibility criteria, by contrast, can be treated as a breach. The practical implication is important. Raising the eligibility bar overnight so that only master’s holders may apply would need careful justification and would cut across the State’s present drive to widen the recruitment pool. Using postgraduate planning, or a recognised planning specialism, as a leading desirable criterion at shortlisting is a different and more defensible approach: it keeps the Level 8 door open, ranks professional education honestly, and invites degree-only candidates to interview when no better-qualified candidate is available.

The shortage argument has to be faced squarely. The Department’s Ministerial Action Plan on Planning Resources, published in October 2024, sets out fourteen actions on education, recruitment, retention and efficiency. It expressly seeks to increase uptake of undergraduate and postgraduate places, to run graduate recruitment campaigns, and in particular to review qualification requirements for planning posts in local government so that the sector can attract as wide a pool of talent as possible. In March 2025, Town Planning Officer was added to the Critical Skills Occupations List after a joint submission that included the Irish Planning Institute. The Office of the Planning Regulator’s advice to would-be planners is that an IPI- or RTPI-accredited qualification is normally required. The direction of policy, in other words, is towards more planners, more routes in, and a wider pool. A profession that responds to shortage by narrowing the gate without expanding the numbers coming through the colleges would be doing itself no favours.

The answer to the shortage is not to pretend that a primary degree and a postgraduate qualification are the same thing. It is to fund more accredited postgraduate places; to support part-time and conversion master’s routes for serving staff who entered on a primary degree and wish to deepen their professional education; and, if shortlisting practice changes, to allow a clear transition period so that people already in the system are not left at a disadvantage. Widening the pool and honouring professional depth are not opposites if the State pays for the depth.

All of this is unfolding inside a much larger industrial dispute in which planners are present but not to the forefront. Since late September 2026, Fórsa members in local government have been on work-to-rule, with SIPTU members across local authorities and state agencies on similar action, over the failure to agree a successor public service pay deal. There was a full-day strike on 14 October. A further national stoppage is planned for 12 November. As of 4 November, Workplace Relations Commission efforts to restore face-to-face talks had produced no breakthrough; Fórsa’s general secretary warned that one-day national strikes could give way to rolling sectoral disruption. The dispute is about pay, living standards and inflation risk across hundreds of thousands of public servants. It is not a planner’s dispute, and the Irish Planning Institute has not been its public face.

Planning has, however, felt the knock-on effects. The Irish Examiner reported on 26 October that further commencement of the Planning and Development Act 2024 has been paused because of the work-to-rule, with the Department of Housing citing circumstances beyond its control and a substantial portion of the Act still to be brought into force. Fórsa’s own local government guidance draws a useful line: routine individual planning applications and normal statutory services may continue, and engagement with applicants’ agents on those applications should continue; participation in broader restructuring, modernisation and change programmes is covered by the instruction to withdraw cooperation. So day-to-day applications may still be processed while the reform programme stalls. That is an awkward place for a profession that the State needs both to process applications and to implement the new planning legislation.

What, then, should be done about professional training and the technical grade? Several options are open. One is to leave eligibility and shortlisting as they are and trust interview boards to weigh professional education case by case. That is straightforward, and it matches the Action Plan’s wish to widen the pool, but it leaves the technical grade resting on a Level 8 award that administrative grades also commonly hold. A second is to raise eligibility itself to an accredited postgraduate qualification. That would be the cleanest professional statement, and the hardest to reconcile quickly with shortage and with fair treatment of serving staff. A third, the one I favour, is to keep Level 8 eligibility, state clearly that an accredited postgraduate qualification in planning or a recognised planning specialism is a leading desirable criterion, and shortlist those candidates first, inviting degree-only applicants to interview only where no better-qualified candidate is available. Experience would still count. TU Dublin’s fully accredited BSc would still open the door. Serving staff could be offered funded conversion routes. And the academic analogy, offered gently, still holds: few university departments would shortlist an applicant with a master’s for a post alongside doctoral candidates as if the two awards said the same thing about professional education. Planners may not want to hear that. The technical grade requires us to say it anyway.

You cannot bring a more demanding planning system into force with a diminished sense of what a planner is. The pay dispute will be settled, or not, on terms that apply far beyond planning departments. The question of professional education is ours. If we want the technical grade, we have to justify it in the booklet, at shortlisting, and in the training places the State says it is willing to fund.

Sources

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Planner’s Take, 5 November 2026

Apartment standards now a National Planning Statement as EU court questions hang over

This is an editorial from BPS Planning, issued for discussion only.

What was anticipated yesterday is now in force. On 4 November, Housing Minister James Browne and Minister of State John Cummins jointly issued the Planning Design Standards for Apartments as a National Planning Statement under section 25 of the Planning and Development Act 2024. It replaces the July 2025 Design Standards for Apartments ministerial guidelines and applies to any planning application, appeal or direct application to An Coimisiún Pleanála determined after that date. For applicants, council planners and Commission inspectors with live apartment files, the operative national design parameters have changed overnight.

The political purpose is clear enough. The ministers said the statement was issued to provide certainty and to boost apartment delivery. The legal vehicle matters. Section 28 guidelines under the 2000 Act could contain specific planning policy requirements that decision-makers had to apply. Under the 2024 Act, development plans and regional strategies must be materially consistent with the national planning policies and measures in a statement and take due account of its guidance. Where the principle of apartment development is already established under the statutory plan and the Compact Settlement Guidelines, determinations after 4 November must apply the statement's design parameters on mix, internal space, dual aspect, floor-to-ceiling heights, stair and lift cores, storage, balconies and amenity. That is the day-to-day test for schemes already in the system and for further information responses still outstanding.

The context that makes the move so charged is the litigation still hanging over the 2025 guidelines. Councillors Darragh Moriarty, David Healy, Dan Boyle and Pádraig McEvoy, together with the late Frank McDonald, challenged those guidelines on the basis that they should have been subject to strategic environmental assessment before adoption. Questions on the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive have been referred from the High Court to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The ministers have been careful to say that the new statement is issued strictly without prejudice to those proceedings. That formulation should be taken at face value. Issuing a National Planning Statement does not extinguish the judicial review, does not answer the referred questions, and does not, of itself, settle the status of permissions already granted under the 2025 guidelines.

There are reasonable objections, and they deserve a fair hearing. Sinn Féin's Eoin Ó Broin argues that the standards will produce smaller and darker apartments, and that reissuing them as a statement is an attempt to make inferior design standards less susceptible to successful challenge. Social Democrats' Rory Hearne has likewise criticised the reduction in apartment size and standards. Floor area, daylight and outdoor space are not easily retrofitted once built, and Ireland's past experience with poor apartment stock is a reason for caution. Treating design standards as the main lever on viability also risks overlooking construction costs, finance, land values and the shortage of buyers at the prices schemes need. Those concerns go to the content of the standards, not only their legal form.

A second objection is legal process. Moving from guidelines to a statement after environmental assessment and consultation puts the instrument on firmer ground than guidelines adopted without that assessment. That is a legitimate reason for wanting certainty, and practitioners will welcome a clearer national baseline for decisions from 4 November. It does not follow that the Court of Justice's eventual answers cease to matter. How Ireland classifies national planning documents under the SEA Directive will continue to shape future statements.

For practice, the immediate task is narrower. Check which applications will be determined after 4 November. Read the final text carefully to see which elements are framed as binding national planning policy and which as guidance. Align drawings, schedules and planning reports with the new parameters where the apartment principle is already accepted. Flag transition issues for files lodged under the old guidelines but still awaiting decision. Councils and the Commission will be expected to apply the statement; applicants who ignore it risk refusal or costly redesign late in the process.

On balance, putting apartment standards on a statutory National Planning Statement footing, with the ministers' express without-prejudice reservation as to the pending European proceedings, is a coherent attempt to give decision-makers something firm to apply. Certainty has real value for housing delivery. Standards should still be judged on whether they produce homes people will want to live in for decades, not only on whether they make schemes viable this year. The statement is now the operative national document for post-4 November determinations. The Court of Justice's answers, when they come, will still matter for how Ireland makes national planning policy. Neither point cancels the other.

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Wednesday, 4 November 2026

Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 5 November 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering the issuing of a National Planning Statement on apartment standards, Wicklow's grant for the Vartry water supply project, An Coimisiún Pleanála's refusal of 80 homes at Tower for inefficient density, an upheld refusal of 22 homes near Naas, record first-half social home builds, a warning that housing output may slip after 2027, and ten four-bed homes sought in Buncrana.

National Planning Statement on apartment standards issued

Housing Minister James Browne and Minister of State John Cummins have issued the Planning Design Standards for Apartments National Planning Statement under section 25 of the Planning and Development Act 2024. It replaces the July 2025 Design Standards for Apartments guidelines and applies to any planning application, appeal or direct application to An Coimisiún Pleanála determined after 4 November 2026. The ministers said it was issued to provide certainty and boost apartment delivery, strictly without prejudice to ongoing judicial review proceedings referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union; Sinn Féin's Eoin Ó Broin said the standards would result in "smaller and darker apartments" and that the minister was reissuing them hoping they would be less susceptible to challenge, while Social Democrats' Rory Hearne also criticised the reduction in apartment size and standards.

Source: Department of Housing (4 November 2026)

Wicklow grants permission for Vartry water storage upgrade

Wicklow County Council has granted Uisce Éireann conditional planning permission for the Vartry Security of Supply Project at the existing Vartry Waterworks south of the Vartry Reservoir. The scheme includes 60 megalitres of treated water storage in two new 30-megalitre structures, an underground dechlorination chamber, a bridge over the Vartry River, solar panels on both reservoir roofs and related works, with a 10-year permission duration. Conditions cover construction and environmental management, traffic, working hours, noise and archaeological monitoring; appeals may be made to An Coimisiún Pleanála.

Source: Irish Independent (4 November 2026)

Commission refuses 80 homes at St Ann's Hill, Tower, for inefficient density

An Coimisiún Pleanála has refused permission for OMD(C) Ltd's large-scale residential development of 55 houses and 25 apartments on the 11-hectare former St Ann's Hydropathic Establishment site at St Ann's Hill, Tower, Co Cork, despite an inspector's recommendation to grant and Cork City Council's earlier approval. The Cork City Development Plan sets a minimum of 35 dwellings per hectare and a target of 40–60 on greenfield outer-suburb sites; the proposal was about 17.3 dwellings per hectare. Commissioner Emer Maughan held that cultural and landscape constraints did not amount to exceptional circumstances to deviate so far from national, regional and local density ranges, and that the scheme would be an inefficient and unsustainable use of zoned serviced lands.

Source: Irish Examiner (2 November 2026)

Commission upholds refusal of 22 homes at Gingerstown Park, Naas

An Coimisiún Pleanála has upheld Kildare County Council's refusal of JJMS Properties Limited's residential scheme of 22 units at Gingerstown Park, Caragh, Naas, according to Construction Information Services. The December 2024 application comprised 16 houses and a part two-/part three-storey apartment block with six apartments, with pedestrian accesses off the R409 and Gingerstown Park and one vehicular access off Gingerstown Park. The council refused on 4 December 2025; the estimated scheme value cited is €5.5 million.

Source: Ireland Live (3 November 2026)

Record first-half social home builds as pipeline exceeds 22,000

The Department of Housing's Q2 2026 social housing delivery statistics show 2,731 new-build social homes constructed in the first six months of 2026, up 51 per cent on 1,804 in the same period of 2025 — the highest first-half figure on record. In Q2 alone, 2,008 new-build homes were delivered; with leasing, acquisitions, HAP and RAS, 4,320 housing supports were delivered in the quarter. The Construction Status Report showed 22,206 social homes at design or construction at end-June 2026, with 9,533 onsite and 12,673 at design or tender.

Source: Department of Housing (2 November 2026)

Yates warns housing output may slip after next year

Speaking on the State of Affairs podcast and reported by The Journal, Ivan Yates, chairman of developer Ingram Homes, said builders expect about 40,000 homes this year and a modest rise next year but fear a drop thereafter, putting the Government's 300,000 homes target for 2025–2030 at risk unless 2028–2029 hit 50,000-plus. He pointed to recent moves to cut council and housing-body purchases of developer-built turnkeys and reported uncertainty over Approved Housing Body partnerships. Housing charities Clúid and Focus Ireland and consultancy Deloitte have also voiced concerns; the Department of Housing is expected to meet AHBs and issue a circular, and the minister has denied any AHB cap.

Source: The Journal (2 November 2026)

Ten four-bed homes sought on former apartment site in Buncrana

Maherinture Developments Ltd has lodged an application with Donegal County Council for 10 two-storey four-bedroom semi-detached houses at Magherinture, at the entrance to the Páirc na hAlúine estate in Buncrana, with connections to public services and associated site works. The same site had 2008 permission for 12 apartments that were never built. Planning documents state an agreement in principle that Donegal County Council would purchase two of the 10 homes; a decision is expected by 16 December 2026.

Source: Donegal Live (1 November 2026)

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Planner’s Take, 4 November 2026

Government moves to lock in smaller apartment standards while EU court question is pending

This is an editorial from BPS Planning, issued for discussion only.

Housing Minister James Browne is expected to bring a National Planning Statement on apartment design standards to Cabinet today. If reports are right, its content will closely follow the apartment guidelines published in July 2025, which reduced minimum floor areas, allowed more studios, required fewer windows and balconies and dropped the requirement for indoor communal or cultural facilities. What changes is the legal vehicle. The standards would move from Ministerial guidelines under section 28 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to a statement under section 25 of the Planning and Development Act 2024, whose provisions on such statements were commenced in October 2025.

The timing matters because the 2025 guidelines are still before the courts. Councillors Darragh Moriarty, David Healy, Dan Boyle and Pádraig McEvoy, together with the late Frank McDonald, argued that the guidelines should have been subject to strategic environmental assessment before they were adopted. In December 2025, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys proposed referring questions on the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive to the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the case has since gone to Luxembourg. The questions go to the heart of what counts as a plan or programme: whether design standards that affect the number and internal layout of units, but not the number or location of developments, are within the Directive, and whether it matters that a decision-maker must have regard to a document rather than comply with it.

The Government's answer is to do the assessment anyway. The draft statement was published in June with an SEA environmental report and put out to public consultation, so the new instrument should be on firmer ground than the guidelines it replaces. Whatever the Court of Justice decides, a statement adopted after environmental assessment and consultation is less exposed than guidelines adopted without one. The Minister is entitled to want certainty, and Cairn Homes' submission to the Oireachtas housing committee this week underlines why. Its chief executive argues that the national target of 50,000 to 60,000 homes a year cannot be met unless roughly half of all new homes are apartments, given the density requirements that now attach to most zoned land.

For practitioners, the shift is more than a change of label. Section 28 guidelines can contain specific planning policy requirements that planning authorities and the Commission must apply in their decisions. Under the 2024 Act, development plans and regional strategies must be materially consistent with the national planning policies and measures in a statement and take due account of its guidance. Applicants, council planners and inspectors will need to read the final text carefully to see which standards are framed as binding policy and which as guidance, and how the transition from the old guidelines is handled for applications already in the system.

There are reasonable objections. The first is about quality. Apartments built now will be lived in for generations, and floor area, light and outdoor space are not easily retrofitted. Smaller units may help viability on paper, but Ireland's past experience with poor apartment stock should make anyone cautious about treating standards as the main lever on cost. Construction costs, finance, land values and the lack of buyers at the prices needed are at least as important. The second is legal. Moving to a new instrument does not make the referred questions disappear. Permissions granted in reliance on the 2025 guidelines may still be argued over depending on how the Court of Justice answers, and it would be unwise to assume that question has been settled by today's decision.

A third point is one of process. Nothing prevents the Government adopting a statement while a reference is pending. But it sits awkwardly with the State's own position that the guidelines did not need assessment at all. Carrying out SEA now is, in effect, an acknowledgement that it is the safer course, a lesson worth applying as other statements replace the remaining section 28 guidelines.

On balance, putting apartment standards on a statutory footing with environmental assessment and public consultation is the right direction, and certainty has real value for housing delivery. Standards should still be judged on whether they produce homes people want to live in for decades, not only on whether they make schemes stack up this year. The final text and the environmental report deserve close reading, and the Court of Justice's eventual answer will still matter for how Ireland makes national planning policy.

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Tuesday, 3 November 2026

Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 4 November 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering new national apartment standards due at Cabinet, final approval of the short-term letting planning statement, a warning from Cairn on apartment output, 153 apartments granted in Ballincollig, a refusal for 403 homes in Clondalkin, councillors' approval of social homes on the Darndale spine site and an appeal refusal for 19 homes in Kilcock.

Apartment standards set to be made national planning policy

Housing Minister James Browne is expected to bring a National Planning Statement on apartment design standards to Cabinet today, which The Journal understands will replicate the July 2025 apartment guidelines that reduced minimum apartment sizes and relaxed requirements on windows, balconies and indoor communal facilities. The 2025 guidelines are the subject of a High Court challenge by councillors Darragh Moriarty, David Healy, Dan Boyle and Pádraig McEvoy and the late Frank McDonald, in which questions on the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive have been referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Government says putting the standards in a statement, which has been through its own strategic environmental assessment, will give builders certainty nationwide.

Source: The Journal (4 November 2026)

Government approves short-term letting planning statement

The Government has approved the issuing of the National Planning Statement on Short-Term Letting by Housing Minister James Browne and Minister of State John Cummins, setting a national approach for councils deciding applications for short-term lets. It generally precludes new permissions in towns and cities with populations over 20,000, while elsewhere councils are to be more amenable and providers get an extended period to obtain consent. Once the Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill 2026 is passed, all providers will have to register with Fáilte Ireland and confirm they are planning compliant.

Source: Department of Housing (3 November 2026)

Cairn warns 60,000 homes a year depends on apartments

In a submission to the Oireachtas housing committee, Cairn Homes forecasts close to 40,000 completions this year, but chief executive Michael Stanley says there is little chance of reaching 50,000 to 60,000 homes a year unless about 25,000 to 30,000 apartments are built annually. He says the National Planning Framework means the State can deliver only about 25,000 to 30,000 own-door houses a year and that 85 per cent of zoned land carries density requirements needing some or all apartments. He called for State support to make apartments viable while private capital remains limited.

Source: The Irish Times (3 November 2026)

153 apartments granted at Old Fort Road, Ballincollig

Cork City Council has granted O'Flynn Construction permission for 153 one- and two-bed apartments in three blocks of three to six storeys, with a childcare facility, at Old Fort Road, Ballincollig, subject to 37 conditions. The site's 2020 permission led to a six-year legal battle that went to the Court of Justice of the European Union, and a fresh application was refused by An Coimisiún Pleanála in May 2025 for materially contravening the unit mix requirements of the 2022 Cork City Development Plan. The scheme was reduced from 157 units after daylight and sunlight concerns.

Source: Irish Examiner (3 November 2026)

South Dublin refuses 403 homes at Clondalkin logistics site

South Dublin County Council has refused Thornmeadow Developments permission for 403 homes, mostly apartments in a nine-storey mixed-use building and three five-storey blocks, at the Securispeed Logistics site in Clondalkin, on seven grounds. Reasons included flood risk, inadequate childcare provision, a substandard single access via Oakfield Road, poor sunlight to some units and open spaces, traffic concerns, a car parking ratio considered too low and the absence of an Environmental Impact Assessment Report. Seventeen submissions were received.

Source: The Echo (3 November 2026)

Councillors approve social homes on Darndale spine site

Dublin City Council members have approved, under the Part 8 process, the council and Respond's plan for social housing on the Spine Site in Darndale, after agreeing an amendment to convert two ground-floor homes to community use, leaving 82 homes alongside an 86 sq m community hub. The original proposal was for 84 homes, including 50 for older people, in buildings of two and three storeys. A further motion to convert 10 apartments to community use was not carried after the housing manager said it would require a complete redraft of the scheme.

Source: Dublin Inquirer (4 November 2026)

Refusal upheld for 19 homes at Church Street, Kilcock

An Coimisiún Pleanála has upheld Kildare County Council's refusal of permission for Mulberry Properties' development of 19 homes on Church Street, Kilcock, according to Construction Information Services. The €4.2 million scheme comprised terraced houses and maisonettes with a new entrance from Church Street and a ramped pedestrian connection to the Royal Canal Greenway.

Source: Leinster Leader (3 November 2026)

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Planner’s Take, 3 November 2026

Ballyboden ruling and Galway ring road settlement show two ways out of planning litigation

This is an editorial from BPS Planning, issued for discussion only.

Two stories from the courts this week show how differently planning disputes in Ireland can end. In Ballyboden, a site on Taylor's Lane has now been through three permissions and three judicial reviews since 2022 before the High Court finally cleared 402 apartments to proceed. In Galway, the last challenge to the N6 City Ring Road was withdrawn after mediation, with the objector satisfied by commitments on walking and cycling routes. One dispute ended with a judgment, the other with an agreement.

The Ballyboden history is worth recalling. Permission for 486 apartments was quashed in 2022, in part over a failure to consider public transport capacity properly. A second approval, for 401 units, was conceded by the Commission in 2025 on grounds of legal error. The third permission, granted in September 2025 subject to 31 conditions, was challenged on the basis that the inspector and the Commission had wrongly found no material contravention of the county development plan on density. Judge Richard Humphreys rejected that argument, finding that the plan supports higher density within Dublin's existing built footprint, suburbs included, and that the density question was a matter of evaluative planning judgment. He added that, even had there been a legal flaw, he would have declined to quash the permission because doing so would be disproportionate, given the urgent public interest in housing.

That last point matters for practice. Relief in judicial review has always been discretionary, but it is notable to see a court say so plainly in a housing case on a site where the same objectors had previously succeeded. Applicants and their advisers should not read it as a licence for careless decision-making. The discretion will be exercised case by case, and it is far more constrained where EU law is engaged: Irish courts must ensure that the requirements of the EIA and Habitats Directives are effective, so a failure in environmental impact assessment or appropriate assessment is a very different matter from a disputed reading of a density objective.

It is also fair to record the other side of the ledger. The judge noted that the same applicant had brought ten planning judicial reviews, and that six had resulted in permissions being quashed. A success rate of that kind is not evidence of frivolous objection. It suggests decisions were being made with errors a court would not overlook. The first Ballyboden permission fell on transport capacity, which is precisely the type of issue communities are entitled to raise. The Aarhus Convention and the EIA Directive require wide access to justice for the public concerned, at a cost that is not prohibitive, and that is a feature of the system rather than a flaw in it.

The Galway case offers a different lesson. The ring road's first approval, in 2022, was quashed because the Climate Action Plan had not been considered. The remitted application was approved last April, and the remaining challenges have now been resolved through discussion with Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the councils. Shane Foran's concern was about traffic on the Headford, Ballymoneen and Letteragh roads and the safety of people walking and cycling. That is a planning concern, and it appears to have been capable of a planning answer. It is fair to say that commitments to progress the possibility of active travel improvements are not the same as delivered infrastructure, and the test of the settlement will be what is actually built.

Taken together, the two cases point in one direction. The most reliable route to certainty is not a more forbidding court, nor tighter rules on who may sue, though the Planning and Development Act 2024 does tighten the standing rules for some applicants. It is decision-making that is right first time: inspectors' reports that engage clearly with the development plan, with transport capacity and with climate obligations, and authorities and developers who take legitimate local concerns seriously before litigation, not after it. Where a project is genuinely contested, structured engagement or mediation of the kind used in Galway should be considered early, while there is still room to change a design.

Everyone with an interest in Taylor's Lane has waited years for an outcome, the developer included, as have the people who might have been living in those homes by now. Families on the Galway route have, as the Minister of State put it, been on hold for too long. Neither delay served anyone well. The lesson for councils, the Commission and applicants alike is that care at the decision stage costs far less than years in the Four Courts.

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Monday, 2 November 2026

Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 3 November 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering the short-term letting planning statement going to Cabinet, a High Court ruling clearing 402 apartments in Ballyboden, the end of legal challenges to the Galway City Ring Road, a new 502-home application in Dundalk, a green space appeal in Tallaght, HAP rental supply and a call to scale up the Land Development Agency.

Short-term letting planning statement goes to Cabinet

Housing Minister James Browne is bringing the National Planning Statement on short-term letting to Cabinet today, setting out how councils should decide planning applications for short-term lets. The threshold-based approach is intended to effectively stop new permissions for short-term lets in towns and cities with populations over 20,000, while in smaller places applications will be considered and existing operators will have two years to get planning consent. Anyone letting a property or rooms for 21 nights or fewer will have to register with Fáilte Ireland, and retention will be acceptable in certain cases for lets operating without consent for seven years or more.

Source: The Journal (3 November 2026)

High Court clears 402 apartments at Taylor's Lane, Ballyboden

Judge Richard Humphreys has rejected Ballyboden Tidy Towns Company's challenge to An Coimisiún Pleanála's September 2025 permission for 402 apartments by Shannon Homes at the former Augustinian seminary on Taylor's Lane, the third permission for the site after two earlier approvals were overturned or conceded. The judge found the applicant had not shown the site was outside a built-up urban area, held that the county development plan supports higher densities within Dublin's existing footprint including suburbs, and said the inspector and the Commission had exercised an evaluative judgment on density. He added that even if there had been a legal flaw he would have refused to quash the permission given the urgent public interest in housing, and provisionally proposed that each side pay its own costs.

Source: The Irish Times (2 November 2026)

Last legal challenge to Galway City Ring Road withdrawn

Active travel campaigner Shane Foran has withdrawn his High Court challenge to An Coimisiún Pleanála's April approval of the N6 Galway City Ring Road after mediation produced commitments to progress walking and cycling facilities on the Headford, Ballymoneen and Letteragh roads, following the earlier withdrawal of challenges by three homeowners. The 18km route, from the end of the M6 to west of Bearna, was first approved in 2022 but that decision was quashed over the failure to consider the Climate Action Plan. Minister of State Seán Canney expects procurement to finish next year, enabling works from mid-2027 and main construction to begin in 2028, with about €1 billion earmarked.

Source: RTÉ News (2 November 2026)

New application for 502 homes at Haggardstown, Dundalk

Marina Quarter Ltd, a Glenveagh Homes subsidiary, has lodged a new large-scale residential development application with Louth County Council for 502 homes, mostly two- and three-bed houses, and a crèche on about 18.5 hectares at Haggardstown and Marshes Upper, with an EIAR and Natura impact statement. The scheme includes a 2.7-hectare central park and interim wastewater storage measures pending Uisce Éireann upgrades at the Coes Road pumping station. Earlier 502-home proposals on the lands were refused on appeal, most recently by An Coimisiún Pleanála in April 2026; submissions are due by 3 December.

Source: Dundalk Democrat (2 November 2026)

Refusal upheld for house on Old Bawn green space

An Coimisiún Pleanála has upheld South Dublin County Council's refusal of a single-storey home on open space at 20A Old Bawn Way, Tallaght, proposed by Kenny Estates as housing for older persons or social housing. The Commission said the appeal had not shown the scheme was community-led housing for older people, social housing or council affordable housing within the development plan policy that allows such housing on open space zoning only where the remaining open space is adequate. Local residents and a councillor welcomed the decision and called on the council to protect the estate's green spaces.

Source: The Echo (2 November 2026)

Just 12 rentals within HAP limits in September, says Simon

The Simon Communities of Ireland's latest Locked Out of the Market report found only 12 properties to rent within any housing assistance payment limits across 16 areas surveyed in September, with none in 11 areas including Cork city, Limerick city centre, Athlone, Sligo, Portlaoise and Waterford city centre. A total of 1,361 properties were available at any price, up 63 per cent on a year earlier. The charity said it had hoped the budget would raise HAP limits, which did not change.

Source: The Irish Times (3 November 2026)

Eamon Ryan calls for Land Development Agency to double output

In an opinion piece, former minister Eamon Ryan, who chaired the European Housing Advisory Board, argues that the Land Development Agency is the one large developer that could scale up quickly, noting about 3,125 homes delivered since 2022 and 13,000 more promised by 2030, mostly cost rental. He points to its sites near Colbert Station in Limerick, Cork docklands and new metro and DART West stations in Dublin as suited to transport-oriented development. He says the main obstacle is the Department of Public Expenditure and calls for housing finance to be planned over 50 years or more.

Source: The Irish Times, opinion (3 November 2026)

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