The High Court has refused permission to appeal its dismissal of a climate-related challenge to planning approval for an Art Data Centres development in County Clare.
Colin Doyle, Friends of the Irish Environment CLG, Futureproof Clare, Martin Knox and Christine Sharp had challenged an April 2024 decision of An Coimisiún Pleanála. Their judicial review was dismissed over two modules in March 2025 and March 2026.
The applicants then sought a statutory certificate allowing an appeal. In planning judicial reviews, that requires a point of law of exceptional public importance and an appeal which is desirable in the public interest.
Their proposed questions concerned the treatment of corporate power purchase agreements, or CPPAs, under climate law; An Coimisiún Pleanála’s duties under section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015; and the role of carbon budgets and sectoral emissions ceilings in project-level decisions.
Mr Justice Humphreys rejected all three proposed questions.
A central issue concerned CPPAs under which renewable electricity would be purchased to offset energy consumed by the data centre. The judge said his earlier judgment had not found that the project would be directly powered by renewables. Rather, it had accepted that the commission could take the renewable-energy offset into account when assessing the project’s consistency with climate objectives.
He held that the applicants’ original pleaded case was that no effective CPPA condition had been imposed. Once the court found that conditions 1 and 3 did require the CPPAs described in the developer’s planning material, later arguments attacking the content or adequacy of those agreements amounted to a new case.
The court also held that the Supreme Court’s February 2026 Coolglass decision had already established the relevant legal framework, leaving planning authorities a range of evaluative choices when applying statutory climate duties.
Humphreys J concluded that the proposed appeal would not resolve uncertain law and would further delay a project which had already undergone council, inspector, commission and High Court scrutiny.
Leave to appeal was dismissed and the underlying judicial review dismissal was ordered to be perfected.