PLANS TO MAKE the planning system digital have been delayed into 2023, the Department of Housing has told The Journal.

Currently, the system for submitting planning applications and appeals remains a mostly paper-based system, except in some local authorities where trials have been rolled out.

Last year, the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) said that the so-called ‘e-Planning’ system would be in place by the end of 2022, while the Department of Housing was more optimistic, aiming for the system to be in place by June 2022.

However, the rollout of the entire project has now been shunted into 2023.

The delays to the project come amid additional scrutiny on the Irish planning system, following a series of controversies at An Bord Pleanála that has lead to a report being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The LGMA says that the e-Planning project “aims to improve efficiency, reduce the potential for invalid applications, and deliver on the government strategy to move more public services online”.

However, there have been some developments in moving the planning system online since last year, with e-Planning pilots being rolled out in both Tipperary County Council and Galway County Council last December.

Using this system, people are able to submit their planning applications and lodge any submissions on existing planning applications online.

While most people are unable to submit planning applications online, individual local authorities do have websites available to search for existing planning applications.

The Department says that the pilot is set to end in mid-September and following that a wider rollout of the e-Planning system will begin.

This will be carried out in separate waves, with local authorities with the least complex planning technology infrastructure – the I-Plan and I-Docs systems -  to be prioritised.

“It is anticipated that ePlanning will have been rolled out in 14 Local Authorities by year-end. The remaining Local Authorities will be integrated following this in 2023,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Housing.

“There is added complexity in respect of those authorities which use other backend planning and document management systems, which includes a number of larger authorities, and we are working closely with these to ensure the integration of the e-planning solution at the earliest possible date.”

The Department added that the development of the overall system was “complex” due to the need to integrate all 31 local authorities into a larger online portal.

It also required local authorities to standardise their IT systems and for some hardware upgrades to handle an online planning system.