The High Court has refused Shane Foran leave to seek judicial review of the 2016 Galway Transport Strategy, finding that his application to challenge it was late and that there was no good and sufficient reason to extend the deadline.
Mr Justice David Holland delivered the ruling on 25 March 2025 in Foran v An Bord Pleanála and Galway City Council. The dispute arose during Mr Foran’s application for leave to challenge An Bord Pleanála’s September 2024 approval of the BusConnects Galway Cross-City Link Scheme. The ruling addressed only his request to add a challenge to the Galway Transport Strategy (GTS), a non-statutory transport plan adopted in 2016.
Mr Foran first sought to have the GTS quashed in a further amended statement of grounds delivered on 15 December 2024. The judge treated that as a substantially new case challenging a separate administrative decision, so a time limit applied. Assuming in Mr Foran’s favour that the eight-week limit under the Planning and Development Act 2000 ran from publication of the Board’s scheme approval on 16 October 2024, it expired on 11 December. The proposed amendment came after that date.
The judge said Mr Foran’s explanation for the delay did not show that circumstances outside his control had caused him to miss the deadline, as required for an extension. He noted that Mr Foran had criticised the GTS in submissions to the Board in July 2023 and had served on Galway City Council’s transport strategic policy committee between 2019 and 2024.
Mr Foran argued that elements of the GTS had become unlawful after Galway was designated an urban node under the 2024 TEN-T Regulation. The judge said the BusConnects scheme was not itself part of the trans-European transport network covered by the regulation. He also said the regulation’s urban-node requirements were to be implemented through sustainable urban mobility plans, with the relevant adoption obligation not taking effect until 31 December 2027. He described the case against the GTS as weak at best.
The court also rejected as unarguable the proposed claim that the GTS was unlawful for conflicting with the 2023 European Declaration on Cycling, which the judge characterised as aspirational and without legal effect.
The judge refused leave to challenge the GTS because the applicable time limit had expired and he would not extend it. He did not decide the other issues argued in relation to the proposed challenge. The ruling does not determine the separate application for leave to challenge the Board’s approval of the BusConnects scheme. The judge’s provisional view was that costs should be reserved to the trial.