The High Court has referred a Leitrim environmental information dispute to the Court of Justice of the European Union over whether Coillte can charge for staff time spent searching for and compiling records.
In a judgment delivered on 28 November 2025, Mr Justice Humphreys stayed Save Leitrim Environmental and Biodiversity CLG's appeal pending answers from the EU court to two questions concerning access-to-information law.
Save Leitrim had asked Coillte on 12 July 2023 for environmental information concerning correspondence with Soil Association Certification about a certification audit carried out in or around May 2022.
After an internal review, Coillte agreed to provide the material subject to a €30 fee representing 1.5 hours of staff time for search, retrieval and compilation. Save Leitrim paid the fee and received the records in October 2023.
Following an appeal to the Commissioner for Environmental Information, Coillte reduced the charge to €15 because some material was already publicly available. The Commissioner upheld the €15 fee in March 2025.
The High Court appeal raises whether EU environmental-information rules still permit public bodies to charge for staff search and compilation time. A 2015 EU court judgment allowed such costs, provided the overall charge remained reasonable. However, Save Leitrim relies on a later decision of the parties to the Aarhus Convention endorsing findings that environmental information should generally be supplied free or for no more than reasonable material costs.
The second question concerns the EU principle of equivalence. The court asks whether Ireland can permit staff-time charges under environmental-information rules where comparable requests under domestic freedom-of-information legislation would not attract the same charge.
Mr Justice Humphreys proposed answers favourable to Save Leitrim on both questions but stressed that the final interpretation is for the EU court. The substantive Irish appeal remains undecided. If Save Leitrim ultimately succeeds on the relevant interpretation, the €15 fee would fall to be refunded.