The High Court has dismissed Friends of the Irish Environment’s judicial review challenge to the Government’s support for Food Vision 2030, the strategy for Ireland’s agri-food sector to 2030. The court held that the strategy was voluntary and non-binding, and that the applicant had not shown that the environmental assessment duties it relied on applied to it.
Food Vision 2030 was prepared by the Agri-Food Stakeholder Committee, a body established by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The Government decided on 21 July 2021 to approve its publication and support its broad policy direction. The strategy was launched on 3 August 2021. The applicant sought to quash the strategy or the Government’s decision and challenged the environmental assessments and the publication of related Government material.
The judgment distinguished the strategy from the Government’s policy decision. Food Vision 2030 itself had no statutory basis, did not bind the Government or other parties, and did not set binding criteria for planning decisions. The court said the Government’s endorsement could amount to policy for planning purposes, but that did not by itself make an appropriate assessment legally necessary.
On appropriate assessment, the court found the strategy too general to assess effects on any identifiable European site by reference to that site’s conservation objectives. The applicant had not pleaded a connection between the strategy and specific sites. The court therefore rejected the claim that an appropriate assessment was required. The State had accepted that if the assessment duty applied, the assessment carried out did not meet its requirements; the court did not decide that issue because it found the duty was not triggered.
The court also rejected the strategic environmental assessment claims. It concluded that the strategy was not binding and, because the applicant had not established that appropriate assessment was required, the relevant grounds for requiring strategic assessment were not made out. Claims concerning monitoring and assessment of the replacement of the earlier Food Wise 2025 strategy failed on the same basis.
The applicant separately argued that Irish rules did not adequately transpose EU requirements to publish environmental information, and that the Government should have published the decision and supporting material. The court found that Food Vision 2030 was not an authorisation requiring publication under the specific EU provision relied on. It also said the challenge could not be used to contest the refusal of the applicant’s information request while that refusal was under appeal to the Commissioner for Environmental Information. The broader transposition arguments were not sufficiently particularised for the court to determine them.
The court dismissed the proceedings and admitted an affidavit from Jennifer McCann that the applicant had challenged. Unless the parties applied otherwise within seven days, the order was to be perfected with no order as to costs.