A Co Clare woman who lost her challenge to the granting of a licence for a hazardous waste incinerator near Ennis wept with relief yesterday after the Supreme Court overturned a decision awarding the substantial costs of the challenge against her.
Ms Orla Ni hEili, of Harmony Row, Ennis, a voluntary worker with refugees, was understood to be facing a bill of £300,000 before the Supreme Court ruling. The Chief Justice, Mr Justice Hamilton, warned that the ruling should not be regarded as a precedent.
The five-judge court set aside a High Court decision awarding costs against Ms Ni hEili in her action against the decision of the Environmental Protection Agency to grant a licence to the pharmaceutical company Roche Ireland Ltd to operate an incinerator at its plant at Clarehill, Clarecastle, and made no order for costs of the High Court hearing.
The court also made no order for the costs of Ms Ni hEili's unsuccessful Supreme Court appeal against the High Court's dismissal of her challenge.
The legal proceedings arose after Roche Ireland sought and secured from the EPA in December 1996 a licence to build the incinerator. The EPA had received a large number of objections, but gave it the go-ahead following an oral hearing.
Ms Ni hEili challenged the procedures adopted by the EPA in granting the licence, but the High Court found there was a "proper rational basis" for the agency's decision. The Supreme Court endorsed that view last July.
When the issue of costs came before the Supreme Court yesterday, Mr Maurice Gaffney SC, with Mr Colm MacEochaidh, said Ms Ni hEili had raised a matter of considerable public importance. The EPA had been challenged for the first time regarding the procedure it had adopted on a matter of enormous importance to the people of Co Clare. A lot of people had opposed the incinerator, he said. And shortage of resources should not be a barrier to any citizen seeking to litigate such issues, counsel said.
