The High Court has quashed An Bord Pleanála’s August 2020 approval of a 657-home development, crèche and associated works on former St Paul’s College lands in Raheny, Dublin.
In a judgment delivered on 7 May 2021, Mr Justice Humphreys ordered certiorari in separate judicial reviews brought by Clonres CLG and by John Conway and Louth Environmental Group. The order removes the board’s decision to be quashed in each case. The court decided domestic-law issues in this module; it did not determine the EU-law issues raised in separate proceedings brought by Sweetman.
The judge found that the board’s inspector and, consequently, the board had wrongly treated the site’s sale to the developer and the cessation of sports use as meaning the land was no longer available for community use. The lands were zoned Z15, and the development plan map identified a sports ground. The judge held that the zoning required the developer to demonstrate how its proposal met specified criteria, including retaining existing functional open space. The court said the required demonstration had not been made and that the decision failed on any of three independent grounds: reliance on an irrelevant consideration, failure to consider possible future community use, and misinterpretation of “use” in the development plan.
The judgment also found that ministerial building-height guidelines required consideration of possible effects on bird flight lines and collision risks because the development was close to sensitive bird areas. The board’s report relied on an environmental impact assessment report and a Natura impact statement, but the court noted that the developer accepted those documents had not considered flight lines or collision. The judge also found inadequate reasons for the board’s treatment of a study referenced by the inspector and for departing from the inspector’s analysis.
On material contravention of the development plan, the judge found insufficient reasons for treating the scheme as being of strategic or national importance. He also rejected reliance on SPPR 1 of the 2018 guidelines as a legal basis for permitting such a contravention. The board’s reliance on more than one statutory ground could not save the decision because the reasons were intermingled and could not properly be severed.
The judgment followed several earlier planning decisions and legal challenges concerning the site. The court directed the parties to liaise with the List Registrar about consequential directions. It said it would provisionally consider striking out the separate Sweetman case as moot, subject to hearing argument; that was not a final order in that case.