This article is from page 17 of the 2006-10-24 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 17 JPG
CLARE County Council has been strongly criticised over the non-disclosure of the details of two planning applications at the centre of legal actions.
The council, acting on the basis of legal advice, opted to keep details of the cases secret amid claims that it acted against legislation set out in the Local Government Act.
According to Councillor PJ Kelly (FF), the confidentiality agreement entered into by the council was contrary to Section 136 of the Local Government Act, which precludes any local authority from entering into such agreement.
In response to a motion tabled by Cllr Kelly in which he requested the number of planning applications not decided upon within the statutory period between January 1, 2005 to September 9, 2006, it was revealed that legal steps had been initiated in two instances.
One case has been rejected by the High Court and is currently being appealed to the Supreme Court, while in the second, the applicant’s case has been “adjourned pending steps being taken subject to a confidential agreement”.
At last week’s meeting of Clare County Council, Cllr Kelly (FF) expressed surprise at the fact the County Manager had not taken into account Section 136 and that the legal advisor was not present to brief the council.
“At least I expected the legal advisor to be here. We are told that planning today is a mystery that we don’t understand but are meant to believe in . . . we are dealing here with the ethics of confidentiality.”
Cllr Kelly also accused Mr Fleming of acting in a “de-facto” fashion in agreeing to the confidentiality agreement and said that case law prohibited such agreements. Cllr Kelly added he had a “rough idea of the geographic location of one of the cases” due to the talk he had overheard in local “watering holes”
Mr Fleming defended his actions, saying he always acted in the council’s best interest and assumed the legal advisor was well aware of any existing legislation.
However, there was sharp criticism from others in the chamber at the lack of a written response to the motion. There were calls from Cllr Tommy Brennan (Ind) and Cllr Martin Lafferty (Ind) to make more information on the relevant cases available.
“I ask whether you can get access to the file, if those files aren’t available to the public, I want them to be identified. We are going down the wrong road . . . this is a sad day for the planning authority in Clare,” said Cllr Lafferty.
Clr Richard Nagle (FF) said it was naive to think the file numbers would be released.