The High Court refused Westmeath County Council’s application to set aside leave for judicial review after extending the statutory time limit on its own initiative. The ruling allows Angela Pearce’s challenge to proceed; it does not decide whether the council’s compliance decision was lawful.
The dispute concerns a condition attached to planning permission for the continuation of a quarry operated by notice party Angela Boyhan. The condition required a detailed survey of the one-way haul route, including its features and the location of lay-bys, to be submitted to the council for written agreement.
The council’s executive engineer, Mkhululi Ndebele, determined on 3 March 2011 that the submission complied with the condition. The council notified the quarry operator by letter on 11 March. Pearce issued judicial review proceedings on 3 May, challenging the purported decision and arguing, among other grounds, that the submission did not meet the condition and that the decision lacked proper authority and reasons.
The council argued that the decision was made on 3 March and that the eight-week period for challenging it expired on 27 April. It said the later letter merely notified the operator of the earlier decision. Pearce maintained that the 3 March form was an internal, incomplete administrative record rather than a final decision, and that the 11 March letter was the decision she understood she was challenging.
Justice Hedigan accepted the engineer’s evidence that the decision was made on 3 March and found that the proceedings were issued outside the eight-week period. He also found that the form was vague and slipshod: it had blank fields, did not clearly identify itself as a formal decision, and did not record written agreement to the submission. The judge accepted that Pearce’s understanding of the documents was bona fide.
The court said compliance decisions should be recorded in a completed document that clearly identifies the decision and condition, states unambiguously that the condition has been met, and is signed and dated by an officer indicating authority to decide.
Although Pearce had declined the court’s invitation to apply for an extension, Justice Hedigan held that the public interest in proper administration and record-keeping justified an extension on the court’s own motion. He refused the council’s application to set aside leave and extended the time limit sufficiently to permit the judicial review challenge. The underlying challenge to the compliance decision remained unresolved by this ruling.