The High Court has refused a request by Mount Salus Residents’ Owners Management Company for further particulars explaining why An Bord Pleanála considered the company’s legal grounds in a planning judicial review inadequately particularised.
The interlocutory ruling, delivered by Mr Justice David Holland on 15 December 2023, concerns a challenge to the Board’s September 2022 decision to grant permission for a four-bedroom house on a site at Torca Road, Dalkey. The judicial review has not yet been decided. The court’s ruling dealt with amendment and particulars motions, not the validity of the planning permission.
Mount Salus says the site is accessed by a public pedestrian right of way between Knocknacree Road and Torca Road. It challenges the permission on several grounds, including an allegation that the Office of the Planning Regulator and the Minister exceeded their powers in connection with the removal of a development-plan objective restricting the number of buildings. Those are allegations in the underlying case, not findings made in this ruling.
The company sought particulars from the Board, the State respondents and the Planning Regulator after they declined to answer its notices. During the hearing and in a subsequent memorandum, the parties clarified a number of disputes. The State identified the documents on which it would rely as showing what the Minister considered. The Board said it did not dispute the pleaded chronology or require proof of documents from its file, but disputed Mount Salus’s interpretations of those documents. The Planning Regulator accepted that the subparagraphs under Ground 6 were particulars of a single overarching complaint.
The judge concluded that Order 19, rule 7 of the Rules of the Superior Courts can apply to particulars in judicial review proceedings. He said respondents should identify which pleaded facts and legal pleas they dispute, while generally not having to explain the basis of a mere denial once the matter denied is identified.
The remaining dispute concerned the Board’s statement that Mount Salus’s legal pleas were inadequately particularised. The Board confirmed that this objection applied to each of the four core grounds pleaded against it. The judge held that the Board had thereby identified the grounds in question and was not obliged to provide particulars explaining why they were inadequate. He refused that part of Mount Salus’s motion.
The judge said Mount Salus had obtained much of the information it sought through the parties’ clarifications. He provisionally considered that the company should receive its costs of the particulars motion from the Board and the Planning Regulator, with no order as to the remaining costs. He invited the parties to agree the form of order and listed the matter for mention on 12 January 2024. The judgment does not record a final costs order.