DUBLIN CITY Council faces a major planning headache after the Commercial Court yesterday upheld a challenge by the Sisters of Charity to the imposition of more restrictive conditions on development of their lands in the new Dublin City Development Plan.
The so-called Z15 designation treated privately owned land as resource land to be used for the benefit of the community; the council had applied that designation to lands “almost exclusively owned by religious institutions”, it was claimed by lawyers for the nuns.
The court has now ruled all the Z15 zoning aspects of the plan, affecting 780 hectares, must be quashed. RTÉ has a separate challenge to the Z15 zoning in relation to lands at its Montrose complex at Donnybrook.
About 51 per cent of all lands zoned Z15 (and 77 per cent of all privately owned lands) are held by religious institutions with the Sisters of Charity’s lands accounting for about 0.5 per cent of the entire lands subject of the development plan.
Mr Justice Frank Clarke ruled that he must quash all of the Z15 zoning aspects of the Dublin City Development Plan 2011-2017 due to the failure to give adequate reasons for such “highly restrictive” zoning.
It remains open to the council to readopt the Z15 zoning or adopt alternative measures, but only if it set out adequate reasons for that, he stressed.
There may be many reasons why Z15 zoning might have been considered a good idea but the problem was none was apparent on the face of the development plan, he said.
While it seemed the overall policy inherent in Z15 was justified and well within the scope of the delegated authority of the council under the Planning Acts, no reasons were given why, for example, residential housing was not open for consideration but social and affordable housing was.
If councillors chose to readopt Z15 with reasons, the court may then have to consider other claims of the nuns which could not be considered now in the absence of such reasons, he said.
Such claims included allegations of discrimination and interference with their property and other rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights.
While making no finding on those issues, the judge observed that the nuns, like all property owners, had no absolute property rights and said a development plan containing restrictions on how property may be developed could at least in principle affect the value of their property.
He would dismiss their claim that the Z15 restrictions amounted to diversion, or transfer of, the benefit of ownership of lands, he said.
No final orders would be made until the sides had had an opportunity to consider the judgment. The matter has been adjourned for two weeks with the judge inviting the sides to engage “in constructive correspondence”.
