The Court of Appeal has dismissed Chris and Rose Murray’s appeals against the dismissal of their action challenging court orders for the removal of an unauthorised house at Faughan Hill, County Meath.
In a judgment delivered on 5 August 2025, Mr Justice Allen, with whom Ms Justice Butler and Mr Justice O’Moore agreed, affirmed the High Court orders. The High Court had dismissed the Murrays’ 2022 action as frivolous and vexatious and an abuse of process, and refused their application for interlocutory relief. The Court of Appeal also said Meath County Council was presumptively entitled to its costs of the appeals, subject to any contrary application within 14 days.
The dispute began after planning permission for a 3,045 sq ft house was refused in 2006. The Murrays then built a 6,220 sq ft house without permission. In 2010, the High Court made orders requiring removal of the unauthorised development and restoration of the land. The Supreme Court dismissed the Murrays’ appeal in 2017. Stays were granted to allow compliance, and in 2020 the Murrays undertook on oath to vacate by 24 September 2022 to allow the Council or its agents to carry out demolition.
Two days before that deadline, the Murrays began a new action seeking to set aside earlier orders, including the 2020 consent order. They alleged that newly discovered evidence about the absence of a section 47 sterilisation agreement and the authority of a landowner’s letters showed that the Council had misled the courts. They also challenged the constitutionality of section 160 of the Planning and Development Act, 2000. The Council sought dismissal, arguing the evidence was not new and the claims could not succeed.
The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court’s conclusion that the purported new evidence was not new, was not relevant to the earlier enforcement decisions and could not have changed their outcome. It noted that the absence of a sterilisation agreement had been apparent from the planning files and had been raised in earlier proceedings. Any challenge to the 2006 planning refusal had to be brought by judicial review within the statutory procedure; the later action could not be used to challenge it indirectly.
The court also rejected the appeals as failing to identify error in the High Court’s reasoning. It dismissed both appeals and affirmed the High Court orders. The judgment did not itself order demolition; it upheld the existing enforcement orders and the dismissal of the later action.