A decision to refuse permission for a Co Laois wind farm will be quashed, after a big Supreme Court judgment on the climate law obligations of planning authorities and public bodies.
The seven-judge ruling made it clear that climate obligations were “real, effective, and if necessary enforceable” and created a “legal standard which must be complied with by a relevant body”.
Such obligations were binding on bodies with no planning function and bodies “not normally concerned with issues of climate change”.
The judgment delivered on Wednesday by Chief Justice Donal O’Donnell, upheld a High Court order that overturned the 2024 refusal of planning permission for the Co Laois project but for reasons different and narrower than those cited by the lower court.
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The matter will be remitted An Coimisiún Pleanála, known as the commission, which is the planning authority that succeeded An Bord Pleanála in 2025.
Coolglass Wind Farm Ltd wants to build the 13-turbine wind farm at Timahoe, Co Laois, in a location 2km from the Kilkenny border and 11km southeast of Portlaoise.
Planners had refused permission because the Laois county development plan prohibited wind farms on the site due to visual concerns. However, Coolglass claimed planners failed to approve enough green energy infrastructure projects to meet 2030 environmental targets.
The 94-page ruling said the significance of the Coolglass appeal “cannot be overstated” as it presented the court with its first opportunity to consider law that strengthened the obligations on planning and other public bodies to be “consistent with climate objectives insofar as is practicable” when performing their functions.
The ruling found the commission “did fail in its obligations to consider whether permission should be granted notwithstanding that it would amount to a material contravention of the development plan” in light of the 2015 Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. Such obligations were amended in 2021.
“The section creates a legal obligation binding upon the commission and enforceable, if necessary, by action, to ensure that any decision it makes to grant or refuse permission is consistent with the climate objectives set out,” the ruling said.
“The High Court’s conclusion that the decision of the commission to refuse permission was invalid and should be quashed, is accordingly upheld on this basis, but for reasons other than those upon which the High Court based its conclusion.”
The essence of the High Court ruling “and its more wide-ranging significance” lay in its conclusion that the commission was obliged to depart from the development plan to favour development more likely to enable Ireland meet climate objectives unless it was impracticable.
However, the Supreme Court found a central part of the lower court’s reasoning cannot be upheld.
“The duty on the commission to perform its functions in a manner consistent with the climate objectives ... while real, effective and enforceable, cannot be converted into the simple formula advanced by Coolglass and accepted by the High Court,” it said.
The fundamental question was whether the commission should exercise its power to grant permission even if it contravened materially the development plan “and the obvious and basic argument in favour of doing so” was the climate benefit.
“It is not apparent that the commission ever engaged with that question in a real and substantive way, and instead the decision and [planning inspector’s] report are phrased in terms that seem to imply that the very fact that the development would contravene the development plan was considered itself a reason to refuse the permission,” said the Supreme Court.
“That was an error of law because the commission was required to consider whether the climate benefits of the project required or justified the grant of permission notwithstanding the material contravention of the development plan.”
This was reinforced when considered with climate obligations.
“Accordingly, the decision of the commission must be quashed, and the decision of the High Court in this regard must be upheld, albeit on different, and narrower grounds.”
