Former deputy chair of An Bord Pleanála pleads guilty to two breaches of planning laws in 'very serious' case
The former deputy chairman of An Bord Pleanála, Paul Hyde, will learn on Friday whether he will receive a conviction after he pleaded guilty to two breaches of planning laws, in what a court heard was a “very serious” case.
Mr Hyde appeared at Skibbereen District Court where Judge James McNulty was told that he was pleading guilty to two breaches of Section 147 of the Planning and Development Act. One related to his failure to declare in 2015 his ownership of what the court heard was a “ransom strip” - a of land of unknown but possibly significant strategic value - in Cork city, and a 2018 failure to declare a number of properties, which he still owned but which by then had had a receiver appointed to them.
Mr Hyde’s barrister, Paula McCarthy, said he had not made the declarations due to a misinterpretation made “in good faith” of the regulations and relevant codes of conduct, and that he had not gained financially from his failure to do so.
Ms McCarthy said Mr Hyde had in fact been affected detrimentally by the failures to make the declarations, and has been unemployed since stepping down from his role as deputy chair of ABP last July amid increased focus on him and his role.
Judge James McNulty heard that the maximum penalties open to the court on conviction was six months in prison and/or a fine up to €5,000, and that Mr Hyde had no previous convictions.
Mr Hyde, who is 50 and lives at 4 Castlefields, Baltimore in Co Cork, had cooperated with the garda investigation, the court was told, attending voluntarily for interviews, as well as cooperating with a previous investigation into various planning decisions that had been conducted by senior counsel, Remy Farrell.
Ms McCarthy said that given the circumstances and accepting it was a “big ask”, she was appealing for leniency and that a conviction not be recorded against her client.
Judge McNulty said that any suggestion that no conviction be recorded or that the matter be dealt with by way of the Probation Act “would be optimistic”, adding: “This matter could not be dealt with in that way. This is a very serious matter.”
Judge McNulty, who heard that this appears to be the first such case of its kind in Ireland, said he would reflect on the matter and would deliver the court’s verdict in Bandon District Court this Friday at 10.30am.
Mr Hyde, dressed in a suit, white shirt and striped red tie, was present in court and left shortly afterwards in a waiting car without making any comment.
Proceedings opened with barrister for the state, John Berry, outlining that the prosecution was accepting two pleas of guilty, relating to offences in the years 2015 and 2018, on the basis of full facts, that on the conclusion of proceedings another seven summons against Mr Hyde would be withdrawn.
Mr Berry and Det Garda Shane Curtis of the Garda Economic Crime Bureau went through the evidence against Mr Hyde, specific to Section 147 of the Planning and Development Act 2000.
Under that section Mr Hyde had to make annual declarations regarding his property interests and the court heard that when it came to his 2015 declaration, Mr Hyde did declare four properties at Pope’s Hill in Cork city, as well as other properties including what are now his principle residences - in Douglas and in Baltimore - but that he did not declare what he later described in interviews with gardaí as a “ransom strip”.
That was what the judge described as a small piece of land in Pope’s Hill in an unusual shape, as seen on land registry records, and which has an undetermined value. The judge later clarified that the value of such strips can be negligible or significant and often depend on their location adjacent to other sites or as potential access points to possible future developments.
Paula McCarthy, BL for Mr Hyde, said the failure to declare this piece of land, referred to in land records as BEB59, was because Mr Hyde had mistakenly believed it did not need to be declared due to its lack of a minimum valuation. However, while this was the case with the Standards in Public Office Act, there was no such minimum valuation aspect when it came to any declaration under Section 47 of the Planning and Development Act.
“He believed that if it was not of a certain value threshold he did not have to declare it,” Ms McCarthy said, adding that Mr Hyde had mistakenly conflated requirements of the Planning and Development Act with the requirements of acts that pertain to public officeholders.
Then in 2018 Mr Hyde’s declaration did not include a number of properties that had previously been declared, including those in Pope’s Hill, as by that time they had had a receiver appointed to them. Ms McCarthy said Mr Hyde had lost the day-to-day running of those properties and was not making any financial gain from them, and mistakenly determined that they did not need to be declared. However, she said he now accepts that he was the legal owner and that they should have been declared, even though his decision not to do so had been made in good faith and was an “incorrect interpretation”.
Judge McNulty said that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” and referred to a section of the contract Mr Hyde signed on becoming a member of ABP which outlined his obligations. He said any interpretation of the requirements by Mr Hyde was a “self-interpretation” and that the requirements of the various declaration and obligations were there to assist the public.
The court heard that the controversy around Mr Hyde was initially sparked by articles by The Ditch and Village Magazine.
In asking for leniency, Ms McCarthy said her client was a qualified architect and hoped to return to the workforce and that a conviction would have a serious adverse impact in that regard. She said Mr Hyde was living in West Cork, was divorced and was helping to his three young children in what was a “difficult” financial situation. She emphasised his early guilty plea, avoiding what she said may have been lengthy proceedings, and his good character.
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