The Court of Appeal has held that Dunnes Stores was in contempt of court for failing to comply with orders requiring it to fit out its anchor store at Point Village in Dublin.
The ruling overturns a November 2025 High Court order which had refused Point Village Development Limited’s contempt application and treated the earlier court orders as ambiguous.
The dispute traces back to a 2008 Development Agreement. In October 2021, the High Court ordered Dunnes to specifically perform obligations requiring preparation of fit-out plans and completion of fit-out works. That decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal in January 2022.
Point Village later complained that plans delivered by Dunnes in March 2022 covered only about 608 square metres, or 6.7% of the anchor unit. Dunnes argued that the agreement gave it discretion over the extent of the area to be fitted out.
The High Court rejected the contempt application, finding uncertainty around what constituted the “anchor unit” and how much of the premises had to be fitted out.
Mr Justice Anthony M. Collins, giving the Court of Appeal judgment, held that this approach was legally incorrect. A court must first determine what an order means before deciding whether it is genuinely ambiguous. Here, the orders had to be read alongside the 2021 specific-performance judgment which created them.
That earlier judgment had firmly rejected Dunnes’ arguments that it could decide whether, or to what extent, to perform the fit-out obligation. The Court of Appeal also found that the parties had consistently understood “anchor unit”, “anchor store” and “Store” as referring to the same premises.
The court therefore proposed setting aside the High Court order and declaring Dunnes in contempt for the failures identified in Point Village’s May 2022 motion.
Point Village was also provisionally entitled to its High Court and appeal costs. The judgment does not itself impose any punitive sanction for contempt, which Point Village did not seek on appeal.