The High Court has refused Patrick McCaffrey and Sons Ltd permission to appeal a judgment dismissing its challenge to two planning decisions concerning its limestone quarry in Donegal.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 26 July 2024, Ms Justice Gearty refused the company’s application for a certificate of leave to appeal. The earlier judgment, delivered on 14 June 2024, had dismissed its application to quash An Bord Pleanála’s decision to dismiss an application for substitute consent and its refusal of conventional planning permission for further development at the site.
The judge said the proposed appeal arguments relied in significant part on a version of events that the court had rejected. The earlier judgment found that the direction to apply for substitute consent covered the entire quarry, rather than only one part. The company had not made the application as directed, the judge said, and the Board could not be faulted for dismissing it. That direction had not been appealed.
The company proposed six questions concerning whether European environmental directives applied to quarries operating before specified dates, whether assessments could cover earlier works, and whether assessments were required for a pre-1964 quarry. The court found these questions hypothetical and disconnected from its factual findings. It said the quarry had continued to develop and intensify long after the directives took effect, so questions about their application to a pre-1964 quarry did not arise on the facts of this case.
The judge also rejected the company’s claim that uncertainty among quarry operators justified an appeal certificate, noting that the claim was unsupported by evidence. She said the law applied in earlier cases was well established and that the proposed questions would not affect the outcome.
Under section 50A(7) of the Planning and Development Act 2000, a certificate requires both a point of law of exceptional public importance and that an appeal be desirable in the public interest. The court concluded that the application met neither basis and refused the certificate. The ruling concerns permission to appeal; it does not itself grant or refuse planning permission or substitute consent.