Arklow Holidays Limited has secured leave from the High Court to challenge planning permission for a wastewater treatment works and associated infrastructure at Seabank, Arklow. The court found substantial grounds to pursue three issues but did not decide whether the permission is valid.
In a judgment delivered on 18 January 2006, Mr Justice Clarke applied the statutory test of whether Arklow had “substantial grounds” for contending that An Bord Pleanála’s decision was invalid. He stressed that the leave hearing was not the substantive judicial review and that he was not deciding the ultimate strength of the grounds granted leave.
The permission had been granted to Arklow Urban District Council for a treatment plant, sewers, roads and an outfall pipe. Arklow Holidays, which operates a mobile home park on adjoining land, had opposed the proposal through the planning process. Its earlier challenge to the County Council’s original permission had ended unsuccessfully in 2003; the Board later confirmed that permission with additional or different conditions.
Leave was granted on a challenge to the Board’s assessment of the project’s environmental effects as a whole. The judge considered it arguable that the assessment had not adequately identified effects of works outside the treatment plant itself or considered their cumulative impact with the plant.
The court also found substantial grounds to argue that the Urban District Council required a waste management licence under the Waste Management Act 1996. The Environmental Protection Agency had taken that view, though the judge noted that the agency’s position was not decisive. He said it was also arguable that considering environmental issues which the Act reserved to the EPA could affect the validity of the planning permission. Because he found substantial grounds on the domestic-law interpretation, he found no substantial grounds for the alternative claim that Ireland had failed to implement the relevant EU directive properly.
The third ground concerned whether the Urban District Council had a sufficient interest in all the land involved to apply for permission. The judge said the law remained open to argument, including whether a confirmed compulsory purchase order and notice to treat for the plant site were enough when other works involved lands for which no such process had begun. He also left open whether Arklow could raise grounds that might have been brought in its earlier challenge.
The court did not find substantial grounds on the challenge to conditions concerning the outfall route and archaeological appraisal, or on the claim that the Board lacked jurisdiction to address effects on the foreshore. It also rejected Arklow’s separate argument that a site map had misled the public, noting that Arklow itself had not been misled.
The order was limited to leave to bring judicial review on the grounds identified. The judgment did not quash the planning permission or determine the substantive challenge.