A school principal and environmental campaigner has taken a High Court challenge to the granting of planning permission for the construction of an integrated sow unit in Co Kilkenny.
Mr Thomas Maher claims that while the planning application in respect of the proposed unit near Ballyragget refers to a 200-sow integrated unit, there would also be the progeny of those sows - 2.4 litters a year or some 26 piglets - and a further 1,900 pigs including gilts (a young sow that has not yet reproduced), boars (male adult pigs) and weaners and finishers (young pigs beyond the piglet stage).
The proposed unit would produce more than 3,000 tonnes of slurry a year, he claimed.
He said the proposed development includes spreading sites for pig slurry adjacent to and in the vicinity of the waters of the Nore river and its tributary, the Grange, near Ballyragget. Those waters were recognised as important spawning grounds for species, including the freshwater pearl mussel, which are protected under the EC Habitats Directive. The site of the development also lay in a proposed natural heritage area.
An Bord Pleanala erred in not requiring that an environmental impact assessment of the development be carried out, he claimed. Its decision to grant planning permission was therefore fundamentally flawed and in excess of its jurisdiction.
Mr Maher, of Seskin North, Ballyragget, who is a member of the Noreside Environmental Protection Group, is seeking an order quashing the board's decision of June 20th, 1997, upholding the granting by Kilkenny County Council of planning permission to Mr Thomas McEvoy for the sow unit at Ballyconra, Ballyragget.
He also wants a declaration that the EC Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations, 1989-94, must be interpreted to require that an environmental impact assessment be completed in respect of pig-rearing installations which are likely to have a significant impact on the environment.
In court yesterday Mr Gerard Hogan SC, for Mr Maher, submitted that An Bord Pleanala had misconstrued the terms of the Environmental Impact Regulations, 1989, and in particular had misconstrued the meaning of the word "pig" as it appeared in those regulations. In particular, it did not count the progeny of the sow when determining the number of units.
He said a pig-rearing installation with a capacity of over 1,000 units on gley soil or 3,000 on other soils required, under the EC regulations, a mandatory environmental impact assessment of its proposed effects.
He submitted the Ballyconra development was one such development and that An Bord Pleanala should have required an EIA to be carried out on it before granting permission. He said the board had erred in its calculations regarding the number of units at the development and was not entitled to fetter its discretion by reference to those calculations.
An Bord Pleanala denies all the claims. It denies the proposed development exceeds the thresholds set out in the EC regulations for such developments and, consequently, denies that an EIA was mandatory in respect of the development. It also denies that it failed to consider the environmental impact of the piggery.