The minister responsible for planning and now even the Prime Minister himself have both unequivocally and in no uncertain terms stated that the Planning Authority board member who had become embroiled in a nasty conflict of interest needs to go.

The conflict of interest - which saw a PA board member not recusing himself but, rather, voting in favour of a highly controversial project that he was selling off plan before the project had even been approved - is so glaring that it beggars belief.

The real estate agent responsible, however, has showed no signs of even considering stepping down from the post now that he has been exposed.

The Prime Minister says that he cannot summarily fire the transgressing board member because, as he says, we have the rule of law in this country.  But in so saying, the Prime Minister may be right but, more likely, he is wrong.  He is wrong because if we had a rule of law in this country, such situations would not rear their ugly heads.

This particular one may be a glaring case in point, and the board member may very well have tendered his resignation between the time of writing and this morning.  But quite irrespective of that, the Planning Authority has not responded in way, shape or form to calls for a stock take of all its board members so as to root out any other potential conflicts of interest amongst its board members.

At this juncture, some faith needs to be reinstalled in the Planning Authority's competence and this is but one small step that needs to be taken, not only to reinstall at least an iota or two of faith in its workings, which are already so much under the microscope, but to ensure the rule of law of which the Prime Minister speaks of is adhered to.

The judge who sent the €300 million City centre project back to the drawing board did not preclude the off ending board member from serving as a board member because of his involvement in the real estate sector, but rather said that that he should recuse himself on cases where he stood to gain financially.

That should have always been the rule of thumb.  And since it hasn't been the rule of thumb for some reason, it now needs to be etched in stone.

For those celebrating the fact that the db Group will have to start all over from scratch have celebrated rather prematurely.  The project was not sent back to the drawing board on its merits but, rather, solely because of the conflict of interest of the one board member, and thanks largely to reporting by The Shift News.

But like the City Centre project, the PA itself needs to go back to the drawing board.  And in a way, it is a small mercy that this has happened as it was high time that an issue like this was brought to the fore so that it can be addressed head on.

Now the PA needs to take the bull by the horns, vet its board member as properly and, once and for all, eliminate any possibility of such a drastic situation occurring again.