Quarries and the implementation of 261 registration

 

Quarries are the single greatest category of development in Ireland where there is large scale illegality and irregularity.

Section 261, Planning and Development Act 2000, which came into force in April 2005, was supposed to regularise the operations of Ireland’s heavily non planning compliant quarry industry, where so many sites were operating either without or in breach of planning or linked to illegal dumping.

 

All of the information to date is that despite the elaborate registration and public advertisement provisions, the objects of the Act are not working and that the operation of unauthorised quarries is increasing and that the regulations are simply going to be used to give retrospective legality to unauthorised sites. No provision has been put in place or no resources given to local authorities to establish that the information presented by applicants in their registration forms is independently assessed and validated as correct. A large number of applications are fraudulent in claiming either that quarries or defined areas of quarries have established pre-1964 or later planning permission status. This is done simply by claims or statutory declarations made by applicants. Local authorities are not vetting or examining this information, e.g. by examining old Ordnance Survey photographs, and therefore allowing fraudulent applications to be accepted.