Phil Hogan Minister for the Environment - and Auctioneer ? - Is Going To Rewrite the Planning Act

[Dr. FIVE]

Amazing that he hasn't been made explain the above in any meaningful way.

Didn't you hear?

They were on honeymoon last year...

[jpc]

Didn't you hear?

They were on honeymoon last year...

That's over.
And I'd like to see that smirk gone off his face.
Especially since he was whinging about having a bit pared off his TD's salary.

[C. Flower]

Our new Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogan, FG, is going to amend the 2010 Planning Act, a Green shaped piece of legislation, that attempts to limit scope for damaging, developer-driven, planning. He is anxious to loosen central control so that local authorities can “play to the strengths” of their areas. I'm not sure that Phil is the right man for this job.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/....html?digest=1

Phil Hogan is a close personal friend of Michael Lowry and has been for decades. This friendship has in no way been disturbed by the findings of the McCracken Tribunal or Lowry’s resignation from Fine Gael.

Phil Hogan was/is an auctioneer. He has worked with Michael Lowry on land related matters since Lowry’s resignation. As a local authority member, in the past he has been instrumental in getting unexpected zonings through the system. At times it might have been hard to know whether he was functioning as an auctioneer or an elected representative.

His own view about whether or not he is an auctioneer seems hazy. In 2004 in a radio interview he confirmed that he was one. In 2011, he told the Village that he had been an auctioneer “in the earlier part of his life”.

http://www.independent.ie/business/i...le-476715.html

http://www.villagemagazine.ie/index....ny-lowes-blog/
Phil Hogan as Director of Elections for Fine Gael in 1995 had a hand in fund raising for the Party and in this capacity, had to do with Denis O’Brien. O’Brien and ESAT were“assigned to Hogan for action” by FG. As a result of their interactions, £6,000 were paid over by O’Brien to Fine Gael in the summer of 1995, when ESAT’s “second generation” bid was under assessment.

The Broadsheet.ie has extracted some relevant correspondence from the Moriarty Report.

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/03/23/...l-yours-sarah/

Moriarty covers a meeting – did it happen, did it not ? – involving Hogan and O’Brien.

Moriarty Report Volume 2 Part 2 Para 41.07 – mid Oct 1995
Phil Hogan said he had no memory of this meeting. Mr. Fitzgerald stood by his evidence under questioning. Hogan said he never made any representation to a civil servant or to a Minister and that he was not involved in the process.

The Greens may well weep at the prospect of Phil Hogan in the Department of the Environment.

From the Village article again..
.

Time to bump this thread maybe, and remember that Phil Hogan remains a close friend of Michael Lowry, and was an auctioneer by profession from many years during which he was also an elected public representative with responsibility for making County Development Plans and zoning land.

[Nicht Besonders]

Council broke planning laws but Hogan still stopped probe

ENVIRONMENT Minister Phil Hogan cancelled an inquiry into a local authority -- despite a report from a watchdog which confirmed planning breaches there, the Irish Independent has learned.

The Ombudsman found that Cork City Council didn't stick to planning laws when it failed to make details of key meetings between planners and developers publicly available.

However, despite the findings, Mr Hogan subsequently blocked a separate planned independent investigation into the Cork city issues that had been instigated by his predecessor as environment minister, John Gormley. Five others into other council areas were also shelved by Mr Hogan.

The Cork investigation, by Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly, focused on complaints that minutes of pre-planning application meetings involving applicants and city council staff were not being made available to the public before final decisions were made.

[DCon]

Dublin City Council are off the hook

A dossier submitted by An Taisce in 2009 to then minister John Gormley detailed 23 planning cases where the council management’s decisions “clearly conflicted with the [Dublin] City Development Plan and/or architectural heritage guidelines”.

During the boom, it said the council “accommodated and even encouraged development proposals grossly out of proportion to their surroundings and in breach of the development plan, including several high-rise buildings within the historic city core”.

In doing so, the council “systematically disregarded its own development plan and other guidelines by approving the majority of development in this period, with An Bord Pleanála acting as a sort of safety valve to curtail and overturn its worst excesses”.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...314683421.html

[C. Flower]

Dublin City Council are off the hook


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...314683421.html

It was in fact elected Councillors and community groups who opposed these developments. An Bord Pleanála can't do anything unless someone appeals a development.

[C. Flower]

This slipped under my radar back in April - appointment by Phil Hogan of the founder of Greenstar to An Bord Pleanala.

http://www.thejournal.ie/serial-plan...21912-Apr2012/

[C. Flower]

All his An Bord Pleanala nominees -

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...314008686.html

[C. Flower]

Met Lowry and a local businessman lobbyist just after the publication of the Moriarty Report and today is reported as having met - against the advice of Departmental officials - with someone tendering to dispose of the evoting machines.

http://www.politicalworld.org/showth...gan+Auctioneer

[PaddyJoe]

Met Lowry and a local businessman lobbyist just after the publication of the Moriarty Report and today is reported as having met - against the advice of Departmental officials - with someone tendering to dispose of the evoting machines.

http://www.politicalworld.org/showth...gan+Auctioneer

A company called Omnivent based in Waterford. There were several emails from Dept officials advising him not to meet them because it would bring the impartiality of the tendering process into question.
They didn't get the contract in the end.

[C. Flower]

Is getting rid of the National Spatial Strategy now.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...329982576.html

It was wooly, and virtually everywhere was a designated growth centre of some kind, but it was a sort of a plan.

What I wonder will he want to replace it with?

[PaddyJoe]

Is getting rid of the National Spatial Strategy now.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...329982576.html

It was wooly, and virtually everywhere was a designated growth centre of some kind, but it was a sort of a plan.

What I wonder will he want to replace it with?

It was great fun as an attempted vote winner in the same way that McCreevy's decentralisation was. Probably didn't feck things up as much though.

[DCon]

What I wonder will he want to replace it with?

A tram covering every street in Kilkenny? Tax breaks for every resident of Kilkenny?