The Supreme Court dismissed John Callaghan’s appeal over An Bord Pleanála’s decision to route a proposed 46-turbine wind farm in County Meath through the strategic infrastructure development (SID) planning process. It held that interested members of the public had no right to be heard before the Board formed its preliminary opinion on whether the project qualified for that route.
The judgment, delivered by Chief Justice Frank Clarke on 31 July 2018, concerned the preliminary classification stage, not whether the wind farm should receive planning permission. The Board had refused permission for the proposed development in February 2016, making the appeal moot. The Court nevertheless decided it because the legal question could recur in other SID cases.
Element Power began pre-application consultations with the Board in May 2014. After receiving an inspector’s report, the Board decided in September 2014 that the proposal qualified as an SID. That meant a planning application had to be made directly to the Board rather than to the local planning authority. Callaghan sought judicial review of the designation, arguing that interested members of the public should have been heard before it was made.
The High Court refused leave to seek judicial review but certified a point of law for appeal. The Court of Appeal answered that question against Callaghan, and the Supreme Court considered his further appeal on that certified issue.
The Supreme Court held that the Board must reconsider the project’s strategic importance on its merits when deciding whether to grant permission. Its earlier opinion, formed for the limited purpose of choosing the planning route, could not bind or influence that later decision. The Court also found that differences between SID and ordinary planning procedures did not create a material, practical barrier to making objections before the final permission decision.
The ruling was limited to the claimed right to be heard at the preliminary SID classification stage. The Court did not decide that a hearing right could never arise in a later matter, such as a proposed amendment to a permission; it said any such question would have to be considered at the appropriate stage. The appeal was dismissed.