John Downey is a prominent and well known Townplanner being the MD of DOWNEY - a leading, multi-disciplinary practice of Chartered Town Planners; RIAI Architects, Urban Designers; and, Project Managers. Downey Planning in effect provide development advice and all assoicated services under one roof making itself unique in the current market with its procurement and delivery of planning applications John advises many of the larger construction / development firms and funds; large retailers and commercial operators, and, several state bodies and organisations. John himself is a chartered town planner with over 26 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 master’s 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 (Strategic Housing Development), LRD's, 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 Government’s Advisory Group for the new National Planning Framework (2016) and the new Guidelines for Apartments (2018). He was a former RTPI (Ireland) Representative on the ECTP-CEU (European Council of Spatial Planners), a former Chair of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Ireland and is currently attends the General Assembly Board in London serving on several elite committees including the Policy & Research Committee. John has also served on the advisory boards of both UCD School of Planning and also the School of Architecture. In terms of awards, he has received the Irish President’s Award for planning research (2011, Downey Hynes Partnership), in 2015 he received an awards from the Irish Planning Institute for the work he did with Fingal County Council in Lesotho in 2015 and in 2023 DOWNEYs received an IPI Awards for Portarlington Urban Regeneration Strategy. Recently he has presented at several conferences involving property, planning and development including being on several national media channels including Prime Time on RTE.