Friends of the Irish Environment loses legal aid appeal

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Friends of the Irish Environment CLG lost its appeal over legal aid for environmental litigation at the Court of Appeal; the report was published on 8 February 2023.

The court held that the Civil Legal Aid Act 1995 did not extend legal aid to corporate bodies, and dismissed the group’s appeal. Its case concerned funding for proceedings challenging the National Planning Framework and National Development Plan.

The judgment also rejected the group’s arguments under Article 47 of the EU Charter and the Aarhus Convention. It said the group had not shown that the costs of its environmental litigation were prohibitively expensive.

This report covers an earlier stage of the case. Later developments are not reported here.