At a recent construction industry conference, Tom Phillips, the managing director of the Dublin-based planning consultancy, Tom Phillips and Associates, voiced concerns over the difficulty of hiring spatial planners across the sectors. He alleged that government entities like the Land Development Agency are engaging a significant number of planners, leaving a vacuum in local administrations and private companies.
Phillips suggested that planning should be included in the Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Employment’s list of critical skills to facilitate the hiring process of overseas planners. According to him, while there’s availability of architects and technicians, planners are hard to come by.
This concern comes after Wind Energy Ireland (WEI), flagged that the lack of professional planners in local agencies is stumbling the growth of renewable energy. Noel Cunniffe, WEI’s chief executive, in the group’s pre-budget submission pointed out that despite recent investment in State agencies having improved decision-making speed on planning applications, there’s still a staffing issue.
Cunniffe stressed the importance of allocating necessary resources to the planning system to efficiently conduct assessments of an ever-increasing number of applications for critical renewable energy infrastructure.
These concerns were echoed at the Construction Industry Federation’s annual conference, where the government’s foremost planning adviser acknowledged that staffing levels at An Bord Pleanála had been of keen interest to recent developments.
Claragh Mulhern, currently in the position of Principal Planning Advisor at the Housing Department, highlighted the board’s management of crucial large-scale projects from a strategic infrastructure aspect. Simultaneously, she admitted that there is a significant demand for talented individuals across the system, something her department is actively acknowledging. She mentioned the department’s interaction with the Enterprise Department regarding this issue, stating the necessity of it as an undisputed fact. She emphasized not just the necessity for ABP, but also local bodies to be suitably resourced.