Local authorities were reluctant to force developers to finish housing estates and to meet other conditions attached to planning permission, the Ombudsman said yesterday. Mr Kevin Murphy was speaking at the launch of his annual report for 1999 in Dublin.
In a separate investigation, which is to be published shortly, his office has found about 6,500 cases of local authorities continuing to collect mortgage repayments for months and sometimes years after the mortgages were paid off.
Mr Murphy also expressed concern at the number of local authorities which had to be forced to reply to queries from his office.
Planning enforcement was a key area of concern in his dealings with local authorities, he said. This particularly applied to unfinished housing estates.
"Developers can be very cavalier," Mr Murphy said.
The attitude seemed to be "let's get the planning permission first and if there's restrictions let's get rid of the restrictions either by ignoring them or by going back to get them changed".
When that happened, "county councils are quite reluctant to get to grips with the developers".
County councils say they can penalise developers by making them forfeit a bond if they fail to finish an estate but, said Mr Murphy, the bond often was for an amount which was less than the cost of carrying out the work.
To get developers to comply with planning conditions "we have to get the county councils to take them to court and county councils are increasingly reluctant to do that", he said.
He regretted he did not have the resources for a study of planning enforcement in all local authorities but "it would tie up a member of staff for two years and I couldn't justify that", he added.
He said he welcomed recent statements from the Minister for the Environment "about getting to grips with management in the local authority area and plans to have performance indicators - but he has no indicators for planning enforcement".
The forthcoming report on the overpayment of mortgages to local authorities is expected to reveal that about £500,000 is owed to householders by local authorities which went on collecting repayments after the mortgages had been fully paid up.
Section 7 notices, which oblige a body to respond to queries from the Ombudsman or be in contempt, were issued to 17 local authorities during the year.
The main offenders were Cork County Council and Kildare County Council, with three notices each.
"If they don't reply to an office like mine, you have to wonder what sort of service they are giving families," Mr Murphy remarked.