The High Court has quashed planning permission for a 221-bed student accommodation development at Church Lane and Swords Road in Santry after finding that failures in the public notification process shut a local resident out of the planning procedure.
Ian Croft challenged Dublin City Council’s 30 September 2024 decision granting permission to developer Aideen Whelan for the mixed-use scheme, which also included a café and student amenity spaces.
The dispute arose after an earlier application for the same development was declared invalid on 6 August 2024 because its newspaper notice omitted statutory wording explaining the public’s right to make submissions. The council instructed the developer to remove the associated site notices and stated that any fresh application had to be accompanied by new notices.
The old site notices were not removed. A second application was lodged the following day with a corrected newspaper notice, but relied on the existing site notices.
Mr Justice Humphreys held that this breached the Planning and Development Regulations. Once the first application was invalidated, the old notices had to be removed and fresh notices erected for the new application. The judge found the council should have ensured that happened before validating the second application.
Croft had contacted the council about the invalid application and was advised to wait for any new application before making an observation. His evidence was that he relied on physical site notices, remained unaware of the fresh application and only discovered the permission through a property report on 15 January 2025.
The court accepted that evidence. It found the notification failures had actually disadvantaged him, including by preventing him from making a submission and thereby preserving a right to appeal the council’s decision.
Dublin City Council conceded certiorari, meaning the permission was quashed. The court also extended the time for Croft to bring his judicial review and awarded him recoverable out-of-pocket expenses against the council, with otherwise no order as to costs.