Conor Norton was on his way home from work when he got the call from a whistleblower.
It was 5.10pm on November 5, 2021.
Norton, an academic in Technological University Dublin, was president of the Irish Planning Institute (IPI), the representative body for the state’s 900 or so planners.
The whistleblower told him she was about to resign from the institute. She wanted to reveal various strands of malpractice she had observed. Norton asked her to put in all in a letter.
The revelations surprised but didn’t shock him. According to a subsequent interview he gave to an investigator, what he was told “provided a rationale for some unexplained and unusual events which had been puzzling” to him.
The allegations included attempts to undermine Norton’s presidency, manipulate elections to the institute’s ruling council, the wrongful use of funds, and, crucially, unauthorised attempts to change IPI policy about a major government planning initiative that was supposed to be central to solving the housing crisis.
Within a year of receiving the call, Norton and five other of the twelve council members would have resigned in protest, the executive director of the IPI departed under a cloud, and major questions would remain about conflicts of interest in the planning sector.
The IPI is highly influential in the area of planning. Its members work for local authorities, developers, An Bord Pleanála (ABP), and in academia.
It nominates members for ABP and regularly has input into planning...
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