The Court of Appeal has sent Coillte’s Sliabh Bawn wind farm valuation back to the Valuation Tribunal, ruling that the Tribunal should have considered recorded energy output available before the valuation certificate was issued. It also said the Tribunal could not rely on output data from after that date.
The appeal concerned the valuation of the wind farm for rating purposes. The Tribunal had set its net annual value using the Receipts and Expenditure method and adopted a conservative P90 estimate of energy output. Coillte challenged the valuation, which was €4.875 million, and argued for a reduction to €3.3 million. The Commissioner of Valuation argued for €6.53 million.
The Roscommon revaluation order specified 30 October 2015 as the valuation date, before the wind farm was built. It began operating in March 2017. The Commissioner added it to the valuation list during the revaluation, and issued its valuation certificate on 7 September 2017. By then, recorded output data was available for March to September 2017.
The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court that this pre-certificate data was relevant under the Valuation Act 2001 and should have been considered alongside the earlier output projections. The court said any limits in the short period of recorded figures affected the weight the Tribunal might give them, rather than whether they could be considered. It left that assessment to the Tribunal on remittal.
The court set a firm cut-off: relevant data had to be available by the certificate date. Figures based on output after 7 September 2017, including later parts of Coillte’s 2017 and 2018 trading accounts, could not be used. The Tribunal erred by considering those later figures in its “stand back and look” assessment.
The court upheld the Tribunal’s choice of P90 as a reasonable valuation judgment on the evidence then before it, but said the P-value question must be revisited because the Tribunal had to assess the available recorded output first and could not rely on later data. It remitted the appeal to the Tribunal for reconsideration.
Separately, the Court of Appeal disagreed with an obiter opinion of the High Court judge on the statutory framework. It said a relevant property built after a valuation order but before the new list is published may be added during the revaluation and valued in its actual state, using relevant data available up to the certificate date. The court’s answers were given on a case stated from the Tribunal; it did not itself set a new valuation for the wind farm.
On costs, the court proposed that Coillte recover 80% of its High Court and appeal costs. The parties had seven days after electronic delivery of the judgment to dispute that proposal; the judgment says it would be perfected if no dispute was notified.