The High Court has refused applications to pause a judicial review challenge to retention planning permission for works at Mount Juliet Estate, and to lift a restraint preventing An Bord Pleanála from deciding a related appeal.
Mr Justice Garrett Simons ruled on 10 March 2020 that the legal challenge should proceed to a substantive hearing. He did not decide whether the planning permission was lawful or whether the alleged breaches of environmental requirements occurred.
Mount Juliet Estates Residents Group is challenging Kilkenny County Council’s decision to grant retention permission for the removal of a putting course at the estate. The works were carried out in 2016 without prior planning permission. An Bord Pleanála declared in August 2018 that they constituted development and were not exempt. The council granted retention permission on 29 April 2019, and the residents group appealed that decision to the board while also pursuing judicial review.
The group argues that retention permission was prohibited because the works should have undergone procedures required by the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive or the Habitats Directive. The council and developer dispute that any breach triggering the prohibition occurred. Those issues were not determined in this interlocutory judgment.
The council sought a stay of the judicial review proceedings pending the board’s decision on the appeal. Under the Planning and Development Act 2000, the court said, an appeal should take priority where the matter before the board is within its jurisdiction. But if the residents group establishes its central argument at the full hearing, the statutory prohibition would affect both the council’s power to consider the retention application and the board’s jurisdiction to hear the appeal.
The judge also rejected the council’s submission that the board could remedy any environmental-assessment failure by conducting an assessment during the appeal. He said that approach could undermine the deterrent purpose of the rules governing unauthorised development and retrospective permission.
The developer separately sought to lift an existing stay that had prevented the board from determining the appeal while the judicial review was pending. The court refused that application too, saying that allowing the board to proceed could set up a “foot race” between the two proceedings and would disregard the statutory framework for deciding which should take priority.
The judge said the challenge should receive an expeditious hearing and proposed arrangements for it to be heard in the following weeks. The substantive judicial review, and the board’s appeal, remained unresolved in this judgment.