DAA has won a High Court appeal over the 2019 decision to split Dublin Airport into three separate properties for commercial rates valuation purposes.
The Commissioner of Valuation had previously treated the airport as one rateable property. During the 2019 revaluation, it was divided into the Main Airport, Car Parks and External Buildings. Their initial combined net annual value was €186.55 million.
DAA challenged both the split and the resulting valuations. It argued that the approximately 2,600-acre airport operates as an integrated economic unit and that its car parks and ancillary buildings are integral to airport operations.
The Valuation Tribunal heard three linked appeals over 21 days. In June 2023 it delivered decisions on the Car Parks and External Buildings but held that it had no jurisdiction to reconsider the Commissioner’s decision to split the airport. It reduced the Car Parks valuation from €27.25 million to €23.9 million and increased the External Buildings valuation from €4.41 million to €4.585 million. No decision was ever delivered in the Main Airport appeal.
Ms Justice Siobhán Phelan held that the Tribunal had taken too narrow a view of its statutory powers. The Valuation Act 2001 created an extensive appeal system, she found, and an appeal about the correctness of a valuation necessarily allows the Tribunal to consider the property unit being valued where that issue can affect the valuation itself.
The ruling does not decide whether Dublin Airport should ultimately be treated as one rateable property, nor which valuation methodology should apply. Those are matters for the specialist Tribunal.
The practical effect is that all three appeals must now be reheard by a newly constituted division of the Tribunal. It will be free to reconsider from the beginning whether the airport should be one valuation unit or three, and then determine the appropriate valuations accordingly.
The judge also described the failure to deliver all three original appeal decisions in a timely manner as “deeply unsatisfactory”.