The Supreme Court has upheld the quashing of An Coimisiún Pleanála's refusal of planning permission for a 13-turbine wind farm near Timahoe, Co Laois, while substantially narrowing the legal reasoning used by the High Court.
Coolglass Wind Farm Limited sought permission for the strategic infrastructure development on a site about 11km southeast of Portlaoise and 2km from the Kilkenny border. The Commission refused permission in August 2024 because most of the site lay within an area where the Laois County Development Plan did not permit consideration of wind farms and because of landscape and visual impacts.
The High Court later quashed that decision, holding in broad terms that section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 created a strong presumption favouring renewable-energy projects unless permission was impracticable.
In its judgment of 4 February 2026, the Supreme Court rejected that interpretation. It held that section 15 does impose a substantive legal duty on public bodies to perform their functions, so far as practicable, consistently with national climate plans and objectives, but does not create a simple rule that climate-positive projects should normally be approved.
The court nevertheless found the Commission's refusal unlawful. The central question was whether it should exercise its power under section 37G(6) of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to grant permission despite the material contravention of the development plan. The project's climate benefits were an obvious factor in favour of doing so, but the Commission had not engaged with that issue in a real and substantive way.
The Supreme Court therefore upheld the order quashing the refusal, though on narrower grounds than the High Court. It rejected separate arguments based on the European Convention on Human Rights, EU sincere-cooperation obligations and alleged abdication to the Planning Regulator or Minister.
The court provisionally proposed remitting the application to the Commission for reconsideration.