The High Court granted relief to ten applicants challenging An Bord Pleanála’s planning permission for a six-turbine wind farm in County Cork. Mr Justice Michael Peart found that the wind farm and its future connection to the national grid were parts of one project, but the grid connection’s potential environmental effects had not been assessed.
Framore Limited obtained permission from the Board on 14 November 2013, subject to 17 conditions. Cork County Council had previously granted permission, which the applicants appealed. They sought to quash the Board’s decision and obtain declarations, arguing that the environmental impact assessment was flawed and that the wind farm and grid connection had been improperly treated as separate projects.
The applicants’ noise-related challenges included claims that the Board failed to assess the effects on residents in the particular location, misread measurements for a low-noise area, and did not follow the 2006 wind energy guidelines. The Board and Framore argued that the Board had considered detailed environmental material, including further information on noise, and had carried out its statutory assessment.
The judge rejected the noise challenge. He said the applicants had not shown that the Board failed to conduct a proper environmental impact assessment or made a fundamental error concerning the noise measurements. He also found that the Board had regard to the 2006 guidelines; the law did not require it to follow them rigidly or give reasons for departing from a particular guideline.
On the grid connection, the applicants argued that it was integral to the wind farm and that the environmental effects of both phases should be assessed together before permission was granted. Framore said the route and design were outside its control and had not yet been determined by ESB Networks. The Board argued that the connection could be assessed later when it became the subject of a consent process. Condition 4 of the permission stated that the wind farm permission was not consent for a national grid connection.
The judge concluded that the turbines could serve no function without connection to the grid, making the connection fundamental to the overall project. Unlike a separate development that could operate independently, this project required a cumulative assessment. He found there had been no assessment of the connection’s potential environmental impact, because its details were not yet available. The judge considered that the developer’s lack of control over those details did not remove the obligation to assess the overall project at the earliest stage.
The court granted the reliefs identified as D1 and D2 in the applicants’ Abridged Statement of Grounds. The judgment does not specify in the supplied text the wording of those reliefs, so the precise terms of the order cannot be stated here.