The High Court has dismissed a judicial review challenge to An Bord Pleanála’s 2013 grant of planning permission for waste processing and storage at Cork Dockyard near Cobh, County Cork. Mr Justice Noonan held that the Board carried out the required environmental impact assessment and gave sufficient reasons for approving the proposal despite an inspector’s recommendation to refuse it on traffic grounds.
The case was brought by 14 local residents against the Board, with Cork Dockyard Holdings Limited and Cobh Town Council as notice parties. The residents sought to quash the permission, a declaration that the Board had failed to carry out an environmental impact assessment, and a ruling that condition 7 was invalid and could not be separated from the rest of the permission.
The council had refused the original application in June 2012, citing traffic safety, congestion, flood risk and fire safety. On appeal, the developer removed a previously proposed waste storage facility, reducing the development’s scale and expected traffic. A Board inspector nevertheless recommended refusal over traffic safety. The Board granted permission subject to ten conditions, concluding that the proposed traffic increase would not cause congestion or endanger public safety.
The residents argued that the Board had not properly assessed or recorded the environmental effects, and had not explained clearly which parts of the inspector’s assessment it accepted. The judge said the decision and the documents it referred to made clear how the assessment was reached. The law allowed the Board to adopt the environmental impact statement and reports from its inspector and advisers. The judge found that the Board’s reasons for disagreeing with the inspector were clear enough, and that the residents had not established that the assessment or decision was unlawful or irrational.
Condition 7 required the developer, if the council displaced roadside parking near the site entrance to facilitate the project, to provide up to 20 public parking spaces on its land, on terms to be agreed or determined by the Board. The judge found that the condition was unenforceable and therefore beyond the Board’s powers. Its location, timing, availability and charging arrangements were left unresolved, and the condition could not clearly bind landowners if the relevant land were later sold.
However, the judge held that condition 7 could be severed from the permission. The Board had allowed the development to proceed whether or not roadside parking was removed, so the condition was not essential to the permission. The court dismissed the application; the planning permission otherwise stands.