The High Court has quashed An Bord Pleanála’s decision that a proposed increase in annual intake at Glassco Recycling Limited’s Naas facility was development requiring planning permission. The court found the Board had not adequately explained its reasons and remitted the matter to it.
Mr Justice Cian Ferriter’s judgment concerns a proposed increase from 97,000 to 120,000 tonnes a year at the glass and can recycling facility at Osberstown Business Park, Caragh Road, Naas, County Kildare. The company sought judicial review of the Board’s May 2021 declaration, made after reviewing a Kildare County Council decision.
The Board had concluded that the additional 23,000 tonnes would raise material planning issues, including traffic movements, storm-water discharge and dust deposition. It found that the increase would amount to a material change in use through intensification and was not exempted development. The Board’s inspector had recommended the opposite conclusion, finding the increase was not development and was exempted.
The company argued, among other grounds, that the Board had wrongly treated the substitute consent granted in 2014 as permitting an annual intake of 97,000 tonnes. The court rejected that challenge. Although the consent had no express tonnage-limit condition, its application and remedial environmental impact statement repeatedly described an intake of up to 97,000 tonnes. The judgment therefore held that the Board had not erred in treating that figure as the permitted level. A separate challenge alleging irrationality also failed: the Board could assess the material before it, including the company’s expert reports, using its planning judgment.
The court also rejected the company’s fair-procedures claim. The company had put its position on intensification before the Board, and the Board considered that issue.
However, the Board’s decision did not explain, even in broad terms, how the increase would affect traffic, storm-water discharge or dust, or why any such effects would be significant enough to constitute a material change in use. It also did not give a sufficient explanation for departing from the inspector’s recommendation. The court said it was not deciding that the Board could never reach the same conclusion, but that it had to explain its reasoning.
The court said it would grant an order of certiorari quashing the Board’s decision and remit the matter to the Board. The judgment states that the precise form of the order remained to be discussed with counsel; it does not record a final order beyond that stated intention.