The High Court has refused a judicial review brought by Drumquin Construction (Barefield) Limited and Padraig Howard over the expiry date of a planning permission for 29 houses and 18 apartments at Tulla Road, Roslevan, Ennis, County Clare.
The dispute concerned whether an extension order made in 2012 extended the permission to 15 July 2017, as stated in the order, or to 29 August 2017 after applying a statutory rule that excludes the period from 24 December to 1 January when calculating time limits.
Ennis Town Council granted the permission in 2007. In September 2012, it extended the permission for five years, stating that it ran from 15 July 2012 to 15 July 2017. The court noted that the original permission’s five-year term, calculated under the statutory rule, should have expired on 29 August 2012. However, the extension order specified 15 July 2012 as the starting date and 15 July 2017 as the expiry date.
The applicants sought declarations that the extension should be read as running from 29 August 2012 to 29 August 2017, and that enforcement notices issued by Clare County Council on 20 July 2017 were invalid. They also sought to have the notices quashed.
The court said the error in the 2012 order could have been challenged by judicial review, but that the statutory eight-week period for doing so had passed. It rejected the applicants’ argument that a presumption of regularity allowed the court to read the order as if it applied the statutory calculation. In the court’s view, that would amount to a collateral challenge to the order’s legal error after the time limit had expired.
The judgment said the order’s stated expiry date was clear and unambiguous to a member of the public. The court accepted the Council’s submission that the applicants’ proposed interpretation was strained. It therefore refused all the reliefs sought.
The judgment also recorded that work began at the site on 10 July 2017 and continued until 27 October 2017, despite prima facie non-compliance with two pre-commencement conditions. Those conditions required a €145,000 insurance bond and a €554,499.50 infrastructure contribution. The court noted that these matters had not been disclosed in the affidavits supporting the application for leave.