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Tristor Ltd -v- Minister for the Environment & Ors.

Pays/Territoire
Irlande
Type de cour
Nationale - cour supérieure
Date
Déc 10, 2010
Source
UNEP, InforMEA
Nom du tribunal
High Court of Ireland
Juge
Clarke.
Numéro de référence
[2010] IEHC 454
Langue
Anglais
Sujet
Questions juridiques, Environnement gén.
Mot clé
Planification territoriale
Résumé
For the reasons set out in the principal judgment, the Judge came to the view that two specified directions given by the Minister under s. 31 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 (“the 2000 Act”) must be quashed. It did not necessarily follow that the development plan which is at the heart of these proceedings had to be adopted in the form in which it was prior to the Minister’s intervention by means of the directions to which I have referred. The debate turned on the reliefs sought seeking to quash an initial resolution passed on the 10th March by Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council in compliance with the quashed ministerial directions and the final adoption of the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Development Plan 2010-2016 on the 11th March, which plan included the amendment made by virtue of the resolution of the 10th March. The question is of whether, and if so to what extent, it was appropriate for the court to quash the resolutions adopted by Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council subsequent to its receipt of the ministerial directions which are the subject of these proceedings and, to the extent that it might be appropriate to quash either or both of those resolutions, what the status of the process for the adoption of a development plan by Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council actually is. The statutory scheme for the formulation of a development plan is designed to ensure that there is proper public consultation at all stages in the process. The formulation of the draft development plan is not merely an administrative stage in the process leading to the formulation of the development plan itself. Rather, it is a formal step in the process designed to put interested members of the public on notice of what is under consideration and invite the observations of any such interested parties The question which, therefore, arises is as to whether the amending resolution of the 10th March can stand if the ministerial direction falls, for without the ministerial direction there is no doubt but that the resolution could not have been passed. In that regard, counsel for Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council places reliance on the jurisprudence of the courts which is to the effect that it does not necessarily follow that in all circumstances there can be no legally valid consequences of an invalid determination. The Court granted the orders sought at paras. D(i), D(ii), D(iii) and D(iv) which will have the effect of quashing both of the ministerial directions, the amending resolution of the 10th March and, in part, the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Development Plan as adopted on the 11th March. However, the order sought at para. D(iv) will be qualified by confining the operation of that order to that portion of the development plan in question which zoned the lands, the subject of these proceedings, as Objective E. In determining what the appropriate zoning is to be, the elected members are required to operate on the basis that a valid process, The elected representatives cannot go back behind that point for there was nothing wrong with the process up to that point. The elected representatives must take the matter up now from that point onwards and adopt a revised development plan to fill the gap left by the quashing of the zoning of the lands in question. The Court proposed to remit the matter back to the elected representative of Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council for the purposes of deciding how the lands in question should be zoned for the purposes of the development plan. However, in dealing with such zoning, the elected representatives are required to recommence the process on the basis that the process up to and including the date of the first ministerial direction (the 5th March, 2010) was validly conducted and to the intent that the elected representatives are constrained, in recommencing the process in accordance with this order, to act only in a manner consistent with the 2000 Act on the basis that the process up to the 5th March, 2010 was valid and binds the elected representatives in their further actions.