John is the COO of Downey, a leading, multi-disciplinary practice of Chartered Town Planners; RIAI Architects, Landscape Architects; Urban Designers and Project Managers. Downey’s in effect provide all services under one roof making itself unique in the current market with its procurement and delivery of planning applications.
John himself is a chartered town planner with over 24 years’ experience in planning & development within both the private and public sectors having worked previously in Fingal County Council as a Senior Executive Planner. In academia, he was a lecturer in the School of Planning in DIT (2010-2012) to both undergraduate and masters’ level.
John is a specialist in planning and overall development procedures, inter alia, the procurement of all planning applications through the various planning processes including EIARs, SIDs, SHDs, oral hearings, and public consultations.
Moreover he has been heavily involved within key advisory roles including the first research papers on planning changes for the Oireachtas (Issue and context – government reform of planning legislation, 2014); The Department of Finance (2015); and was part of the Advisory Group for the new National Planning Framework (2016) and the new Guidelines for Apartments (2018).
He is currently the RTPI (Ireland) Representative on the ECTP-CEU (European Council of Spatial Planners) and was a former Chair of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Ireland and a General Assembly Board member in London serving on several elite committees including the International Committee and the Policy & Research Committee.
John has also served on the advisory boards of both UCD School of Planning and also the School of Architecture. Finally, he has being awarded the Irish President’s Award for planning research (2011, DHP) and also received an award from the Irish Planning Institute for the work he did with Fingal County Council in Lesotho in 2015.