The High Court set aside leave granted to AHP Manufacturing B.V., trading as Wyeth Medica Ireland, to pursue a judicial review challenging conditions attached to its Environmental Protection Agency licences. It also refused the company’s application to amend its grounds to challenge the constitutionality of the statutory time limit.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Kevin O’Higgins on 8 May 2008, concerned four motions: three applications by the respondents to set aside leave, and the company’s motion to add a new constitutional argument. The judge did not decide the underlying validity of the licence conditions or the proposed constitutional claims.
The company operated a pharmaceutical production facility in County Kildare under EPA integrated pollution control licences issued from 1997. Conditions in revised licences registered as numbers 309 and 581 required waste sent off site for recovery to be conveyed by an EPA-approved contractor. In November 2006, the company was served with 18 summonses alleging waste-disposal offences on dates between September 2000 and May 2001. Five alleged breaches of those licence conditions.
The company obtained leave for judicial review in January 2007. It sought to challenge the conditions, contest the legislation under which they were imposed, and prevent the prosecution from proceeding on the five related charges. The respondents argued that the challenge was out of time.
The court held that section 87(10) of the Environmental Protection Agency Act 1992, as amended, barred proceedings questioning the validity of an EPA licensing decision unless brought within eight weeks of the decision. The judge found that the licence and its conditions formed one decision, so the time limit applied to the company’s challenge. He also found that the company had missed the time limit under Order 84 of the Rules of the Superior Courts, which required an application to be made promptly and within the applicable period from when its grounds first arose. The relevant period began when the licences were granted, not when the criminal summonses were served.
The judge rejected the argument that the challenge was a collateral issue arising from the criminal proceedings. He said the licence conditions existed independently of those proceedings and that section 87(10) expressly covered challenges in judicial review and “any other legal proceedings whatsoever.”
Because the challenge was time-barred under both the Act and the court rules, the judge held that the company lacked standing to pursue its constitutional challenge to the licensing provisions. He also refused the proposed amendment concerning the statutory time limit, citing the long delay and the absence of an explanation.
The court ordered that the EPA’s and the State respondents’ motions to set aside leave, along with the DPP’s motion, succeed. It refused the company’s amendment application. The judgment records those procedural orders; it does not determine the alleged offences in the summonses.