The High Court has left in place An Bord Pleanála’s refusal of planning permission for a house at Faughanhill, Co Meath, despite finding legal errors in two of the Board’s three reasons for refusing it.
In a judgment delivered on 29 March 2023, Mr Justice Alexander Owens said the Board wrongly treated Faughanhill as an area under strong urban influence and applied a National Planning Framework test that displaced the criteria in the Meath County Development Plan. The plan designates the area as a “Strong Rural Area”. The court said Louise Murtagh’s housing need had to be assessed as a rural-generated need under that plan.
The court also found that conditions attached to two 2005 planning permissions could not themselves provide a legal basis to refuse Murtagh’s application. Those conditions required agreements restricting further non-agricultural development on the relevant landholding. The court said there was no evidence the agreements had been executed, and that such conditions could not predetermine the outcome of a later planning application.
However, the court upheld the Board’s separate finding that the proposed house would create excessive development density in a rural area lacking some public services and community facilities. It said Murtagh had not shown a reviewable error in the Board’s planning judgment on that issue. The court treated this as a decisive, stand-alone reason for refusal, independent of the errors in the other two reasons.
Murtagh lives in Faughanhill with her mother and works as a cleaner at a local school, the judgment said. She had previously applied unsuccessfully for permission to build on the site in 2006. The Board’s decision followed a refusal by Meath County Council and an appeal to the Board.
The court’s ruling concerned a judicial review challenge to the Board’s decision of 5 July 2021. It did not grant planning permission or send the application back for reconsideration. Justice Owens concluded that the valid density finding was sufficient to support the refusal and declined to set aside the Board’s decision.