The High Court has refused to certify an appeal to the Court of Appeal over the quashing of planning permission for 399 apartments at Heuston South Quarter in Dublin.
An Bord Pleanála granted HPREF HSQ Investments Limited permission for the mainly residential strategic housing development in March 2022. The site shares a boundary with the gardens of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham and is partly within a protected "cone of vision" identified in the Dublin City Development Plan 2016-2022.
In November 2024, Ms Justice Emily Farrell quashed the permission. She found that the Board's decision, read with its inspector's report, amounted to a finding that the development would adversely affect the protected view. Under the development plan, new development within the cone was not to adversely affect that view. The judge held that permitting such an impact amounted to a material contravention which required the Board to use the statutory procedure for approving a development despite that conflict. It had not done so.
The developer then sought a certificate under section 50A(7) of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to appeal that ruling. It proposed questions concerning pleading requirements, how courts should interpret planning decisions, whether exact development-plan wording must be used and whether material contravention was a question of degree.
Ms Justice Farrell rejected all of them.
She held that the pleading principles were already well established and that any alleged error in applying them to this case would not amount to a point of exceptional public importance. Likewise, disputes about whether the inspector's wording showed an adverse impact on the protected view concerned interpretation of this particular decision and were factual rather than legal questions suitable for certification.
The court also rejected the proposed question on degree. Planning judgment was involved in deciding whether an impact was adverse, but once an adverse impact existed, the development plan's prohibition applied.
The certificate application was therefore refused. The judgment does not undo the earlier order quashing the planning permission.