The High Court refused Peter Sweetman’s application for a certificate allowing an appeal against the refusal of relief in his challenge to An Bord Pleanála’s 2018 decision on a wind farm grid connection. It also ordered the Board to pay him one third of his costs, recognising that his submissions on environmental assessment raised a valid point that the Board had asked the court to decide.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Quinn on 16 June 2023, concerned the statutory test for an appeal certificate: whether the decision involved a point of law of exceptional public importance and whether an appeal was desirable in the public interest. The court found the proposed questions did not meet that test.
The dispute arose from the Ballycumber wind farm in Co Wicklow. In 2015, Wicklow County Council declared the grid connection to be development but exempted development. An Bord Pleanála made a further declaration in December 2018 after a referral by local resident Mr Dunne. Sweetman began judicial review proceedings in February 2019.
In its February 2023 judgment, the court held that Sweetman’s case was an impermissible collateral challenge to the 2015 declaration. It said he had known of that declaration by September 2017 but had not challenged it or sought an extension of time. The court also found that the Board had erred in treating the grid connection as exempt: the wind farm and connection formed one project, and the connection had not been included in the wind farm’s environmental impact assessment. The court nevertheless refused the relief sought, in part because the challenge could not be used to undermine reliance on the earlier declaration.
Sweetman later asked the court to declare that the Board’s 2018 decision breached the EU environmental assessment directive. The court refused that request on 30 March 2023, relying on its earlier findings about the collateral challenge and the finality of the 2015 declaration.
In refusing an appeal certificate, Quinn J said the proposed questions about the Board’s jurisdiction and its handling of the later referral would not change the outcome, which rested on Sweetman’s conduct and the effect on the notice party. He also said the Board’s receipt and consideration of the referral was an intermediate administrative step, not a substantive decision open to judicial review.
On costs, the court noted that the Board had asked it to decide the environmental assessment issue and had defended its approach, but lost on that point. It ordered the Board to pay one third of Sweetman’s costs, balancing that result against the finding that his proceedings were an impermissible collateral challenge.