‘An Bórd Pleanála not fit to decide on Moore Street’

Commenting on the referral by Minister Darragh O’Brien of the Remy Farrell report on An Bórd Pleanála to the DPP, the Garda Síochána and SIPO, James Connolly Heron of the Moore Street Preservation Trust said the Bórd was no longer in a position to decide on current planning appeals and certainly not in relation to Moore Street.

In welcoming the Minister’s action he said:

“The Minister’s referral of this report to the Gardai and the DPP, as well as his public statement, amounts to an admission that public trust in An Bórd Pleanála has collapsed.

“The current board should be stood down and replaced along the lines of the Minister’s statement.

“In the meantime all decision making by the current board on appeals in hand must be suspended in the planning and public interest pending investigations by the appropriate authorities.

“This is An Bord that refused an oral hearing on the Moore Street appeals.

“The decision to refuse was taken by a sub-panel and not the full board, a practice the Minister says is now being discontinued ‘as a matter of urgency’, following his engagement with the chairperson of An Bórd Pleanála.

“It would be a travesty if this discredited board were to be allowed to decide on the future of Moore Street an area described by The National Museum as the most important historic site in modern Irish history’.“