The Gazette 1984

GAZETTE

SEPTEMBER 1984

BOOK REVIEW

avoidance of planning jargon in this helpful and enlightened document. Chapter 3 is headed 'The Need for Planning Permission', but covers in addition procedure, duration, contents, conditions, interpretation and the revocation of Planning Permissions. The policy of quoting the relevant Judgments with a minimum of comment, which is an entirely appropriate policy in the circumstances, obliges the reader to use his own head and to treat the book as providing the raw materials for sound conclusions, rather than ready-made answers. A case like Movie News Ltd. -v- Galway Co. Council has to be handled with care and understood in the context of its special circumstances. I was particularly interested in Dublin Corporation -v- McGrath (High Court — McMahon J. 17th November, 1978, unreported), a useful decision on estoppel and McKone Estates Ltd. -v- Kildare Co. Council, a decision of O'Hanlon J. on 24th June, 1983. This is one of the few decisions on compensation, and there is a valuable examination of the highly significant provisions of Sections 23 and 24 of the 1878 Public Health Act about drainage rights. This is a book of about six hundred pages. There is an adequate Index and an exceptionally detailed table of Statutes and Statutory Instruments. If you can only rise to one book on Planning, you might very well decide to buy this one, especially as there is a promise that it will be kept up to date. • William Dundon

A Source-Book on Planning Law in Ireland by Philip O'Sullivan, S.C. and Katherine Shepherd, B.L. Professional Books Limited, 1984. Price £30.00.

The keynote here is usefulness and convenience, not glamour. The book tries to assemble all the raw materials necessary to reach an informed opinion on any question now arising on the Planning Laws of this jurisdiction. It can be said to succeed in this difficult but worthwhile undertaking. Most of the book consists of verbatim extracts from the relevant statutes and Statutory Instruments together with copious extracts from, or complete texts of, the Judg- ments, reported dnd unreported, of the Superior Courts in planning cases. The judgments fully reported or extracted range from Readymix -v- Dublin County Council which was in the High Court in August, 1970, to Fitzgerald -v- An Bord Pleanala when Carroll J. gave judgment as recently as November, 1983. Many other reported cases, Irish and English, are referred to in the footnotes and editorial material. The selection has been made with knowledge and judgment. The arrangement is good, the editorial material is brief but accurate and very much to the point. The treatment of the enforcement of Planning Control in Chapter 5 is particularly effective. Being a Handbook or Source-Book, this is compiled rather than written. You would not read it for pleasure, not even to obtain a bird's eye view of the planning scene — if you can imagine a bird being interested. It takes a little while to become familiar with the arrange- ment, and to find you way around, but having achieved some degree of familiarity, the arrangement is clear and logical and the printing and presentation exceptionally good. The treatment of the subject, relying so heavily on recent judicial exposition, naturally reflects the matters which have arisen in practice before the Courts. Overwhelmingly the cases have been concerned with planning permissions and their precise terms and effect, appeals and development control. There is relatively little about compensation or purchase notices, and nothing at all on the interesting topic of the relationship of Section 4 of the City and County Management (Amendment) Act, 1955, to the planning process, other than a reference to the treatment of this matter by Judge Keane in his book on Local Government. It looks as if development control in the future will rely very much on Section 27 of the 1976 Act for enforcement. We are unlikely to see many Enforcement Notices under the 1963 Act which have proved difficult to operate and have given rise to numerous technical problems and much room for argument. The High Court can now order a defendant to pay a monetary contribution properly due to a Planning Authority under the terms of a planning permission despite the fact that the contribution condition does not in itself create a debt. As an appendix, there is a detailed and useful memorandum on Development Control from the Department of the Environment which is well worth study. The Department is to be congratulated on its

Incorporated Law Society of Ireland

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