The High Court has ordered a group of residents and Dublin Airport Authority plc to bear their own costs after the residents failed in a planning enforcement application concerning a planning condition linked to an airport development.
Mr Justice Max Barrett delivered the costs judgment on 14 February 2018. The application followed the court’s principal judgment of 21 November 2017, in which the residents’ original application under section 160 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 had failed.
The parties accepted that the proceedings came within section 3 of the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2011. Under its default rule, each party bears its own costs. The court said that rule displaced the usual approach under which costs generally follow the outcome of a case.
The judge considered whether an exception applied that would allow costs to be awarded in favour of a party. Section 3(4) requires both that the case concern a matter of exceptional public importance and that special circumstances make an award of costs just. The residents argued that the case concerned the start of a major infrastructure development without prior satisfaction of a planning condition intended to protect the community and environment; raised a novel legal point; and clarified the continuing authority of Wicklow County Council v Fortune (No. 4) in planning enforcement cases.
The court did not accept that the proceedings concerned a matter of exceptional public importance. It said the environmental subject matter alone was insufficient: the legal issues also had to be of special and general public importance. Having regard to the principal judgment, the judge said the case was not even one of public importance, despite its importance to the applicants.
The court also said that novelty alone did not make a case exceptionally important. And while judgments may have precedential value, the court did not consider its finding about Fortune (No. 4) significant enough to meet the statutory threshold.
Because the first requirement was not met, the judge did not consider whether special circumstances made it just to award costs. He applied the statutory default and ordered each party to bear its own costs. Dublin Airport Authority had not sought costs against the applicants.