The High Court has dismissed a judicial review brought by a residents’ group against An Bord Pleanála’s 2021 permission for a solar farm in Treascon and Clondoolusk, County Offaly. The court did not quash the permission and directed that the matter be listed for any consequential orders.
The application for the project was made to Offaly County Council in March 2021. The council granted permission in May. An Bord Pleanála granted permission on appeal in October 2021, subject to conditions. The residents’ group then sought judicial review.
The judgment addressed challenges concerning planning drawings, flood-risk policy, environmental impact assessment, water quality, protected habitats and birds. The judge found that the drawings and other application materials gave sufficient information about the proposed inverters and solar arrays. The 2021–2027 Offaly development plan was not in force when the board made its decision, and the inspector had referred to the applicable flood-risk guidelines.
On environmental impact assessment, the court said the board did not have statutory jurisdiction to assess rural land restructuring in this application. The judgment identified removal or relocation of nearly one kilometre of hedgerows as rural land restructuring, but said the relevant assessment function lay with the Minister for Agriculture under separate regulations. The court rejected the residents’ pleaded transposition challenge, which argued that the rules should give the board jurisdiction. It did not decide broader questions about how separate consents for elements of a wider project should be sequenced, because those issues were not pleaded.
The judge said the residents could return to court if the developer failed to seek the required agricultural screening or acknowledge that it would not remove hedgerows before a screening decision. The judgment said the residents would first need formally to ask the developer to acknowledge that obligation.
The court also found that the challenged permission’s environmental materials addressed the grid connection, that the River Barrow and River Nore SAC had been screened in for appropriate assessment, and that the water-quality challenge was not established. It accepted that the assessment contained an error about the location of white-clawed crayfish, but concluded that the error was harmless when the decision and supporting material were read as a whole.
The pleaded bird-protection grounds also failed. The court said the relevant regulations excluded planning consent procedures and that broader claims about transposition or the direct effect of the Birds Directive were not pleaded. The proceedings were dismissed. The court made no order quashing the permission.