The High Court has upheld a planning condition limiting music and dancing to one event per week in a function room at the Bonnington Hotel on the Swords Road in Whitehall, Dublin.
Liffeyfield Limited had challenged An Coimisiún Pleanála’s May 2025 decision granting permission to change the use of a former conference centre at the rear of the hotel to a standard hotel function room. The permission allowed conferences, functions and similar hotel uses but restricted music and dance events to once weekly and required such activity to end by 1am.
The hotel argued that it should have been invited to comment before the Commission imposed the weekly limit. It also argued that the Commission had failed to properly consider objectives in the Dublin City Development Plan supporting music and night-time cultural activity, had not adequately explained the restriction and had imposed an unreasonable and disproportionate condition.
Ms Justice Emily Farrell rejected each ground.
The court noted that the planning history was central. The original permission for the conference centre prohibited music and dancing. Temporary permissions later allowed such events on restricted terms, including a one-event-per-week limit between 2015 and 2021. A 2008 application for function-room use had also been refused because of disturbance and noise concerns.
The judge held that the possibility of the same weekly restriction being imposed permanently was reasonably foreseeable. The Commission was not required to provide the hotel with what would effectively amount to a draft decision for comment.
The court also found that the relevant Development Plan objectives were not sufficiently central to require express consideration where no party had raised them. It held that the Commission’s reasons, while capable of being clearer, were adequately discernible from the decision, inspector’s report and planning history.
The challenge was refused. The court proposed no order as to costs because the statutory planning costs-protection regime applied.