High Court Rejects Slane Bypass Challenge

The recent dismissal by the High Court (Court) of a judicial review of the N2 Slane Bypass scheme highlights a rising feature of planning litigation: challenges based on alleged deficiencies in a competent authority’s environmental expertise.

Since amendments to the EIA Directive (under Directive 2014/52/EU) objectors have increasingly relied on the requirement that competent authorities have, or have access to, sufficient expertise to examine an Environmental Impact Assessment Report (EIAR) submitted by an applicant for consent/approval. In the Slane Bypass challenge, this obligation was framed as a defining element of the EIA process itself, which is an argument we see arising in complex or environmentally sensitive developments.