The High Court has quashed Limerick City and County Council’s decision to grant P&D Lydon Plant Hire Ltd a waste facility permit for lands at Clondrinagh, after finding the decision unlawful. The permit had been surrendered before the judicial review hearing, but the court held that its consequences remained live.
In a judgment delivered on 16 December 2020, Mr Justice Heslin found that the permit, granted on 2 November 2018, continued to matter because the council had treated it as regularising the company’s excess fill and had closed its enforcement case after issuing it. The court also found that some permit conditions and obligations survived surrender. The challenge was therefore not moot, and the applicant’s separate proceedings under section 57 of the Waste Management Act were not an adequate alternative remedy for challenging the council’s decision.
The court found that material had been deposited on the site in December 2017, before the permit application. It concluded that the application described much of the work as future activity, materially misrepresenting the position. The council knew the works had already taken place, the judgment found. The council’s own March 2018 notice had required the company to stop handling waste above the 25,000-tonne limit in its certificate of registration. A council report later described the permit application as made “to regularise the situation”.
The judge found that the council sought an environmental impact statement, not the environmental impact assessment report required under the amended EIA Directive. Although the council said it had conducted an environmental impact assessment, no details of one were before the court. The council also relied on a 2017 screening report that used mitigation measures to screen out an appropriate assessment. Following the Court of Justice of the European Union’s ruling in People Over Wind v Coillte, the judge held that this was impermissible. The development had already occurred when the screening report was submitted.
The judgment also noted that the environmental statement recorded siltation, discoloured water and dead aquatic invertebrates in drainage ditches. These were evidence reported in the statement; the court did not make a separate finding that pollution had been proved. It found that the council’s reasons for granting the permit were inadequate and included statements inconsistent with information it already had, including the applicant’s submissions and evidence of impacts at the site.
The court rejected the council’s arguments that the surrendered permit made the challenge academic and that other proceedings were sufficient. It quashed the 2 November 2018 decision. The judgment left the parties to agree the costs order; if they could not, written submissions were to be filed within 28 days.