After considerable ambiguity in respect of environmental costs protection, the Supreme Court’s decision in Heather Hill Management Company CLG & McGoldrick v An Bord Pleanála, Burkeway Homes Limited and the Attorney General [2022] IESC 43 has brought some much-needed clarity to the rules around costs implications of challenges to large scale developments on environmental grounds.

The Environmental Trust Ireland v An Bord Pleanála & Ors case involved an application seeking to quash a decision of An Bord Pleanála (the Board) which granted planning permission under the Planning and Development Act 2000 and the Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Act 2016 to Cloncaragh Investments Limited, the notice party

In a recent High Court judgment[1], the Court struck out a property developer’s claim that local objectors, who issued judicial review proceedings in response to planning permission granted to the developer for a strategic housing development, had committed the torts of maintenance and champerty.

‘Maintenance’ is the giving of assistance to a party

Waltham Abbey v An Bord Pleanála & Ors; Pembroke Road Association v An Bord Pleanála & Ors [2022] IESC 30 concerned appeals against two separate decisions of the High Court. Both decisions raised an identical question of law: whether the word ‘statement’ in Article 299B of the Planning Regulations required a separate identifiable document to

In Friends of the Irish Environment v An Bord Pleanála [2019] IEHC 80, Simons J held that developers are precluded from using the process provided for in section 146B of the Planning and Development Act 2000 (the PDA) to extend the duration of a planning permission.

The Court concluded that a developer could

The Planning and Development (Amendment) (Large-scale Residential Development) Act 2021 (the LRD Act) sets out proposed new arrangements for “large scale residential developments” (LRDs), which will supersede the existing Strategic Housing Development (SHD) process, due to lapse on 25 February 2022. The SHD process was introduced in 2016, with the