Thousands of objections disappear from Dublin planning portal

Some 29,000 third-party objections have “disappeared” from the online planning portal at the largest planning authority in the country.

On Monday Dublin City Council said the 29,000 letters of objection made over years with the planning authority were "unpublished in error" on February 6th. A spokeswoman said: "The intention was to make a change in the back office which would introduce an extra step before scanned documents would be published to the web."

She said all planning files remained available to view online – but the third-party submissions on those files were not able to be viewed online due to the glitch. She said work was ongoing to make them viewable online and that all planning submissions and objections were still able to be viewed at the public counter at the planning department.

Green Party member of Dublin City Council, Cllr Ciarán Cuffe said: “The ability to view third-party submissions and objections is a cornerstone of an open and transparent planning system, and this technical issue needs to addressed as soon as possible.”