Every Tuesday for the past five years, members of a small group of anti-dump protesters have been meeting in each other's homes to plan strategy and find new ways to oppose the siting of the so-called superdump at Ballynagran, near Wicklow town.

"The council officials were reasonable people. They said there had to be a dump. They even hired consultants to show us that no other site was as suitable as Ballynagran. You could see the logic of the thing. So I suppose it did start just as a NIMBY (not in my back yard) thing," says Mr Dieter Clissmann, chairman of the Ballynagran Action Committee.

But it was discovered that the area contained an important aquifer, and at 350 acres it was much too big for Wicklow alone. As the local Fianna Fail TD, Mr Dick Roche, put it: "The Garden of Ireland would have become the rubbish dump of Ireland."

The view was accepted by a majority of county councillors, who twice passed motions instructing the county manager not to go ahead with the plan. However, the county manager took the view that it was a matter for him to decide on the site. The Ballynagran group took the case to the Supreme Court, and lost.

It was a difficult time for the committee. "Wicklow County Council's top level was bulldozing this through. It was all push. They felt that they knew best", says Mr Clissmann. However, the committee felt the council was wrong: it was not a NIMBY issue, but one of environmental importance to the whole of Wicklow. They started to picket each meeting of the council and by last Monday they had been picketing for more than three years.

Along the way they went to Europe, where Commission officials said they were extremely concerned that Ireland seemed to allow dump operators - usually the county council - to be their own licensing authority. The Government was forced to change this, following the committee's visit to Brussels, and it was decided to go to court again.

While he was hopeful that yesterday's decision meant the end of the plan for a superdump at Ballynagran, it is not the end of campaigning for Mr Clissmann. "I suppose we learned a lot along the way. We made contact with other local groups and we formed the Wicklow planning alliance. "The county manager has lost three High Court cases on planning issues in three weeks, with a fourth now pending. That is no way to plan."

It is a view taken up by Mr Roche, who said he felt "personally vindicated" by yesterday's judgment. "Now," he says, "planning in Wicklow has descended to the stage where the Minister for the Environment should perhaps appoint an inspector."