The High Court has quashed permission for a 422-unit build-to-rent development in Stepaside after finding that 74 apartments would have no private open space despite a development-plan requirement applying to every unit.
Fernleigh RA CLG challenged An Coimisiún Pleanála's October 2023 approval for Ironborn Real Estate Limited's scheme on lands off Aiken's Village, Dublin 18. The project also included a childcare facility and associated works.
Mr Justice David Holland found that the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Development Plan required individual apartments to have private open space, such as a balcony, terrace, winter garden or roof garden. Although reductions in the amount of private space could sometimes be accepted in return for additional communal facilities, the judge held that a reduction did not ordinarily mean complete elimination.
Ironborn had omitted balconies from 74 apartments, replacing them with Juliet-style barriers at windows. The planning inspector treated this as acceptable flexibility, noting compensatory communal facilities, but the court held that removing private open space altogether from about 18% of the units materially contravened the plan.
Because the Commission had not acknowledged that material contravention, it had not used the statutory procedure allowing permission to be granted despite such a conflict. The permission was therefore quashed on that ground.
Fernleigh failed on its remaining grounds. The court upheld the Commission's approach to daylight standards, finding it was entitled to consider both Irish and British guidance. It also accepted the Commission's assessment that 34 projecting apartments counted as dual-aspect units.
A separate challenge concerning wastewater infrastructure in nearby Belarmine Park was rejected, with the court finding the proposed storage tank and kiosk qualified as public services compatible with the site's open-space zoning. Fernleigh also failed to establish that Inland Fisheries Ireland was legally required to be notified.
The judge provisionally proposed sending the application back to the Commission for a fresh decision.