The High Court has dismissed a judicial review challenging An Bord Pleanála’s refusal of planning permission for a separate rural dwelling in Co Wicklow. The court did not reconsider the planning merits or grant permission for the proposed house.
The anonymised applicant sought permission in March 2018 to build on a residential site owned by her sibling. Wicklow County Council refused the application in September 2018, citing conflict with the County Development Plan and the proposal for a second dwelling on the site. The applicant appealed, but the board refused the appeal on 29 March 2019.
The applicant argued that the board and its inspector had misinterpreted the plan’s rural housing criteria, acted irrationally and failed to give proper weight to her circumstances, including mental health difficulties and a need for family support. She also referred in legal submissions to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The judge said that convention argument was outside the pleadings and could not support a finding in her favour; he added that the convention was not part of Irish law.
The judgment said the applicant’s history of living in the area and her sibling’s presence there did not make the plan’s category for a permanent native resident building for their family applicable. The judge considered the board entitled to take account of the plan’s intergenerational context. He also said the plan required a definable social or economic need to live in the open countryside, assessed by the planning decision-maker against the policy against unnecessary one-off rural housing.
The court held that the board had considered the circumstances and that the applicant’s humanitarian case did not, by itself, make its decision unlawful. It said assessing the planning merits was for the planning authority or the board, while judicial review examined legality. Ground 8 was not pursued at the hearing; the other grounds were rejected.
The proceedings were dismissed. The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Richard Humphreys on 10 February 2021, records that an earlier order prohibited identifying the applicant because she has a mental health condition.