The High Court has refused Friends of the Irish Environment permission to appeal its unsuccessful challenge to planning approval for a major energy project near Tarbert, County Kerry.
The underlying proceedings concerned An Coimisiún Pleanála’s March 2025 permission for a 600 MW power plant, 120 MW battery storage system and associated works. In April 2026, Mr Justice Humphreys rejected the environmental group’s judicial review challenge.
The group then sought leave to appeal on two proposed questions. Broadly, it argued that EU environmental law might allow fresh material to be introduced in court even where issues had not been raised before the planning authority, and questioned whether the Commission could comply with climate and environmental assessment obligations where allegedly required information had not been supplied.
The judge rejected both formulations. He held that the substantive point had not been pleaded or argued in the form now proposed and that the questions rested on factual premises the principal judgment had not accepted. In particular, the earlier decision had not found that information required by the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive was missing or that the Commission had simply dispensed with such information.
Mr Justice Humphreys also held that the proposed questions mixed law and fact and did not disclose exceptional public importance. He said the principal judgment had applied settled law, including recent Supreme Court authority, to the facts of this particular planning decision.
The court further rejected the suggestion that EU law required a reference to the Court of Justice. It held that no genuine interpretive doubt had been demonstrated and distinguished a right to raise EU-law arguments from an entitlement to have an administrative decision reassessed using evidence which could have been, but was not, supplied during the planning process.
Leave to appeal was dismissed. There was no costs order unless the Supreme Court later accepted a leapfrog appeal, in which case the leave costs would follow that appeal.