The High Court has ruled that a prosecution against Benqueues Limited over planning conditions at The Bad Ass Café in Temple Bar should not proceed, directing that the company be acquitted. The court found that Dublin City Council’s enforcement notice and the summons based on it were flawed.
The case came to the High Court as a case stated from the District Court. The planning permission, granted in December 2013, allowed retention of internal works but did not permit changing the protected building’s primary use from a restaurant to a public house. It required alcohol sales and consumption in the bar areas to remain strictly ancillary to the premises’ principal use as a restaurant.
In July 2014, the council served an enforcement notice alleging a breach because alcohol was sold without a meal. It required the company to stop those sales and remove three illuminated signs advertising Guinness and Heineken. A summons later accused the company of failing to take the required steps.
At the District Court hearing, the council’s enforcement officer testified that he had ordered a Guinness without food during an inspection. He also said he had seen patrons drinking without food on later inspections. The High Court judgment records that the officer was an architectural technician, not a planner or fully qualified architect.
The High Court said the notice framed the alleged breach incorrectly. The planning condition required the bar area to be ancillary to the restaurant’s principal use; it did not require alcohol to be sold only with food. A person joining diners after eating could order a drink without food, the court observed, without that alone making the bar area non-ancillary.
The court also held that requiring the company to stop all alcohol sales without a meal was not a necessary step to remedy the alleged breach. The summons repeated that error by prosecuting the company for failing to take steps that were not required to comply with the planning condition. The evidence described in the case stated was also insufficient to establish a breach, the judge concluded.
The High Court therefore found no basis for the case to proceed and directed that a decision to acquit be given. The judgment does not state that the District Court had already acquitted the company: the council’s counsel told the High Court that the District Court judge had refused an acquittal direction, and the respondent did not dispute that account.