The Court of Appeal dismissed the Commissioner of Valuation’s appeal over the rateable valuation of a city-centre Dublin car park, leaving in place an order for the Valuation Tribunal to rehear the matter before a different division.
The case concerned Stanberry Investments Limited’s car park at 47–53 Clarendon Street, commonly known as the Brown Thomas car park. The Tribunal had set its rateable valuation at €1,045,000, or €2,750 per parking space, after reducing the Commissioner’s figure. The High Court found errors of law in the Tribunal’s decision and remitted the case for a rehearing. The Commissioner appealed those findings.
In a judgment delivered on 26 February 2020, Mr Justice Murray said the Tribunal had recorded that the Arnott’s car park, relied on by Stanberry as a comparator, had contract parking. That was wrong: contract parking was prohibited there, and the Commissioner accepted the factual error. The Court of Appeal held the error was material because the Tribunal’s decision did not clearly explain why it discounted Arnott’s on another independent basis. The court said it could not rewrite the Tribunal’s reasoning to make the error immaterial.
The court also considered the Tribunal’s reliance on the “emerging tone of the list”, particularly the valuations for the Setanta and Trinity Street car parks. Both valuations were under appeal when the Tribunal heard Stanberry’s case. The court said those valuations could be considered as evidence, but would carry very limited weight while untested. By describing itself as persuaded by the emerging tone associated with them, the Tribunal had attached significant weight on an erroneous basis. The court found that error material to the decision.
The judgment did not determine a new valuation for the Brown Thomas car park. It dismissed the Commissioner’s appeal and upheld the High Court’s answers to the two questions of law, leaving the matter to be reheard by the Tribunal.