The High Court has found that part of the approval for the Passage West Railway Greenway upgrade in Co Cork must be quashed because the planning process did not adequately address the demolition of historic railway features within the town’s Architectural Conservation Area.
Marcia D’Alton, Mella Leonard and Norma Lombard challenged An Coimisiún Pleanála’s July 2025 approval for Cork County Council to widen and upgrade about two kilometres of existing pedestrian and cycle route between the Cork city boundary and Railway Quay.
The successful part of their case concerned a railway wall dating from about 1849, an original stile embedded in it and their relationship with a protected former railway water tower on Cork Street.
Mr Justice Humphreys held that the Commission had not properly engaged with a mandatory County Development Plan objective requiring a character assessment for public-realm works within an Architectural Conservation Area. No such assessment had been carried out.
The court also found that the planning inspector had not expressly considered demolition of the stile, despite its identification by the former Passage West Town Council as a heritage feature. The inspector’s conclusion that alterations to much of the wall reduced its heritage significance did not, the judge held, logically justify removal of the remaining original wall.
The judgment also criticised the absence of meaningful consideration of alternatives to demolition and the effect of removing walling on one side of the protected water tower, where historic walling on both sides contributed to its setting and symmetry.
Other grounds failed. The court rejected challenges concerning an alleged local area plan, non-statutory plans, general development-plan objectives, application documentation and the adequacy of traffic and parking reasons. It also found that the applicants had not established that the wall formed part of the legal curtilage of the protected water tower.
Rather than quashing the full greenway approval, the court proposed a partial certiorari order limited to the affected section. The exact boundary, any redesign transition and possible remittal remained for further submissions.