The High Court refused to grant orders restraining Wicklow County Council from considering or adjudicating on an application for planning permission for the building of 240 houses and a new sewage plant at Newtownmountkennedy in Co Wicklow yesterday.
Garden Village Construction Company Ltd, with an address at Dame Street, Dublin, earlier this month brought an application for leave for judicial review of the application for planning permission made by Gannon Homes Ltd, Killorglin House, Shelbourne Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin.
The company wanted leave to seek orders restraining the council from further considering or adjudicating on the permission. It submitted the application was fundamentally flawed and invalid, and that the council had acted in excess of its powers in date-stamping it. Alternatively, having stamped it, Garden Village submitted, the council should have informed Gannon that its application was invalid and could not be considered.
In court yesterday the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Morris, said Wicklow County Council, in its handling of the Gannon Homes planning application, had not breached its obligation to have regard to reason and common sense. The council had acted entirely in accordance with its statutory obligations, he found.
He said the council had no choice, on receipt of the Gannon planning application, but to datestamp it. Date-stamping conferred no additional status on the documents and the Gannon application could still be rejected.
He said the council was entitled to require the furnishing of additional information from Gannon regarding its application. For a court to interfere with such a decision, certain circumstances must exist, he said.
The judge said he was satisfied Garden Village had not established the existence of such circumstances. The decision of the council to seek further information regarding the application was not unreasonable.
He said the Garden Village application was "without merit" and the company had established no grounds for the granting of the orders sought.
In a letter of July 1997, the council told Gannon that it did not consider the application complied with the planning regulations and asked it to furnish certain particulars in order to complete the application. The court was told that that request had not yet been complied with.
Mr James Macken SC, for Gannon, said his clients were awaiting the outcome of the court proceedings.
Mr Dermot Flanagan, for Wicklow County Council, said the council could and would not make a decision on the Gannon application until it complied with the laws. The application by Garden Village was premature.
The council said it had acted at all times within its powers and in accordance with its functions, powers and duties.