The High Court has ruled that it has jurisdiction to send the quashed Shot Head salmon farm licensing decision back to the Aquaculture Licences Appeals Board (ALAB) for reconsideration, despite an objection by Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI).
In a judgment delivered on 31 October 2024, Mr Justice David Holland also said the related foreshore licence decision would be remitted to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to await ALAB’s decision. The court did not set out the precise terms of those orders. It said it would hear the parties on the orders and costs, with costs already adjourned to 11 November.
The ruling addresses the remittal issue following Justice Holland’s 12 July 2024 judgment, which decided to quash the aquaculture licence issued to MOWI for salmon cultivation at a 42.49-hectare site in Outer Bantry Bay, south of Shot Head, near Adrigole, County Cork, and the associated foreshore licence. The earlier judgment identified deficiencies in assessment of potential effects on seals, risks of salmon escaping from the farm, and reasons for concluding that dissolved inorganic nitrogen levels would not breach Water Framework Directive limits. Those were findings in the earlier judgment, not new findings made in this remittal ruling.
IFI argued that section 40(6) of the Fisheries (Amendment) Act 1997, as interpreted in the 2009 Deerland case, meant ALAB’s decision had annulled the Minister’s original decision and left no appeal for ALAB to reconsider. On that basis, IFI submitted the matter could only return to the Minister for a fresh first-instance decision. The other respondents and MOWI argued for remittal. Salmon Watch Ireland and the applicants in the Peter Sweetman proceedings opposed it but left the argument to IFI; they did not take part in the remittal hearing.
Justice Holland rejected IFI’s jurisdictional argument. He held that section 73 of the 1997 Act, which provides for judicial review under Order 84 of the Rules of the Superior Courts, supplies a statutory basis for remittal. He also concluded that ALAB’s statutory annulment of the Minister’s decision left a vestigial element capable of supporting the appeal. The appeals therefore survived for the purpose of remitting ALAB’s quashed decision to it.
The judge said he intended to exercise the jurisdiction to remit. He added that, in his view, making MOWI start fresh applications would unnecessarily add to delays in a process that the Act requires to be expedited. The ruling decided the jurisdiction issue; the precise directions governing reconsideration remained for the parties and the court to settle.