The Supreme Court has granted Friends of the Ardee Bog leave to appeal on one issue arising from An Bord Pleanála’s decision on the proposed N52 Ardee Bypass. The Court left open whether that issue was properly raised in the applicant’s original pleadings. It refused leave on the other grounds.
The issue concerns the Board’s October 2021 decision that Louth County Council did not need to prepare an Environmental Impact Assessment or a Natura Impact Statement for a proposed 4.5km bypass with two bridges. The route passes through part of Ardee Bog, a proposed Natural Heritage Area in an area of Special Protection Area (SPA).
The Board’s inspector concluded that the project was unlikely to have significant environmental effects and that an appropriate assessment screening found no likely direct or indirect effects on SPAs. The inspector considered that no further assessment was required. It was undisputed, however, that no site-specific conservation objectives had been set for the potentially affected Stabannan-Braganstown SPA. The State parties had consented in the High Court to a declaration acknowledging that omission.
Friends of the Ardee Bog argued that the absence of those objectives invalidated the Board’s decision. The Board and the State parties disputed that the issue had been adequately pleaded. The Supreme Court said it was unnecessary at this leave stage to decide that question. It granted leave on whether the Board’s determination was valid given the absence of site-specific conservation objectives, while reserving for the appeal hearing whether the issue fell within the appeal’s scope.
The High Court had dismissed the judicial review in May 2024, finding no manifest error by the Board and that it had sufficient information to reach its conclusions. It granted the declaration, by consent, concerning the State parties’ failure to provide specific conservation objectives for the SPA. The High Court later refused leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal.
The Supreme Court refused leave on the remaining grounds. It said claims about alleged failures to transpose parts of the EU environmental impact assessment directive had been abandoned against the State parties in the High Court, and could not now be pursued as new relief against the Board. The applicant’s separate argument about earlier hedgerow clearing was also among the grounds on which leave was refused.
The Court will await the Court of Justice’s judgment in a related case, Power v An Bord Pleanála, before hearing the appeal. It directed that the appeal be re-entered promptly after that judgment and criticised the delay in the proceedings, while noting that the trial judge was not responsible for it. The Court said all parties had accepted that the High Court delays were unacceptable.