Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-14 ============================================================ Christopher O'Sullivan (FF), Cork South-West I thank Senator Collins for tabling amendment No. 2. The effort taken to table it justifies an explanation as to why, unfortunately, I cannot accept it. The amendment seeks to provide, by inserting a new section in the Bill, that the Minister shall lay before the Oireachtas within 12 months a report "detailing the impact of the amendments to Part 4 of the Principal Act related to Judicial Reviews and detailing whether the procedural changes have resulted in a speeding up of planning related Judicial Reviews or increased the volume of planning litigation resulting in increased delays for residential and infrastructural development". I will outline why I cannot accept the amendment. First, on a technical matter, the judicial review planning procedures are set out in Part 9 of the 2024 Act, while the amendment makes reference to Part 4 of that Act. I presume this is a referencing error in the proposed amendment but the Senator might let me know if I am misunderstanding her intention in any way in that regard. Second, the monitoring, analysis and reporting of data relating to judicial reviews, including associated timelines and durations of proceedings within the courts, is a matter that falls outside the remit of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The management of the courts is the responsibility of the Courts Service, which is independent in the performance of its functions and is under the aegis of the Minister for justice. My understanding is that a ten-year modernisation programme has already been undertaken by the Courts Service and significant progress has been made in improving the availability and use of court data. Accordingly, I do not believe it would be appropriate to provide a reporting requirement in relation to planning judicial reviews in the planning Act, such as that proposed by way of this amendment. The amendment as proposed is not considered to be workable because it would place a statutory requirement on the Minister to report on matters that are subjective in nature. A wide range of factors could give rise to an increase or decrease in the number of planning judicial reviews, and it may not always be possible to determine the exact reason for changes in such levels or for changes in the average duration of proceedings. Judicial reviews against the State, in which my Department may be included as a party, are co-ordinated by the Chief State Solicitor's office under the guidance of the Attorney General's office. An Coimisiún Pleanála, which can be challenged by judicial review on a range of its functions, including decisions on appeals and planning applications in respect of strategic infrastructure developments, already publishes details in respect of legal cases it is involved in as part of its annual report. For these reasons, I cannot accept this amendment. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:15+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-14