The High Court has ruled that the Irish Glass Bottle Company Limited did not establish a right to seek consent under the Landlord and Tenant Acts to change the use of land covered by one of its Dublin Port leases. It also failed to prove that Dublin Port had unreasonably refused its request to use the site for warehousing and logistics services for third parties.
In a judgment delivered on 15 February 2005, Carroll J. considered a dispute over three leased plots near Strand Road, Sandymount and the East Link Bridge. The judgment states that the company used the land for glass manufacture and related storage when it applied to change the permitted use in August 2000.
Dublin Port refused consent, saying the leases allowed glass manufacture and ancillary warehousing and offices, and that the proposed uses did not suit the proper planning and development of the port. The company argued that third-party warehousing and logistics would make use of its site and staff and help offset a shortage of warehousing in the port area. It later offered to limit those services substantially to port-related businesses.
The court first considered the 1973 lease, which covered a strip of land alongside the other plots. At the time of the application, a building on the site stored soda ash used in glassmaking. The rest of the land was used to store finished glass in containers. Carroll J. held that this outdoor storage was not subsidiary and ancillary to the building’s storage of soda ash. The court therefore found the leased premises were not a “tenement” for the relevant statutory provision, so the company was not entitled to require Dublin Port’s consent to a change of use under that provision.
On the separate question of whether consent had been unreasonably withheld, the court said Dublin Port was entitled to consider its own interests and to require details of the proposed use. The company had not provided a detailed plan. The port’s chief executive was concerned that port-related income of about £200,000, mainly profit, could be lost; he also questioned the need for more warehousing and said the proposed port-related restriction would be difficult to enforce. The judgment records that glass manufacture ceased at the end of 2002, after the 2000 application, but the court assessed the request in the circumstances at the time it was made.
Carroll J. concluded that the company had failed to prove that the refusal was unreasonable because it had not supplied the information needed for the port to decide the request. The court did not grant the requested declaration or order directing consent. The judgment also records that the company had claimed consequential damages; it does not award damages.