A couple have lost a last ditch legal bid at preventing the demolition of their large Co Meath home built in “wilful breach” of planning laws almost 20 years ago.
There was “no merit” to the appeals by Chris Murray and his wife Rose, Mr Justice Senan Allen said, when giving the three judge Court of Appeal’s judgment dismissing them.
The appeals concerned an action that, while initiated in September 2022, was “the latest battle” in a 20-year war about the fate of the unauthorised development at Faughan Hill, Bohermeen, Navan.
It was, he believed, obvious to Meath County Council from the outset that the action and appeal were “artifices calculated to postpone the evil day”.
RM Block
After Mr Murray’s 2006 application for permission to build a house on the lands was refused, the couple, “undaunted, and in wilful breach of the planning laws”, built a house anyway of about 588 sq m (6,220 sq ft), twice the size of the house for which permission was refused, the judge said.
The council took proceedings in 2007 under the Planning Act and in 2017 the Supreme Court upheld High Court orders for the couple to remove any unauthorised development from their land. They were given one year to vacate the property.
When that was not complied with, the council issued contempt proceedings in 2019 that settled in 2020 on terms involving the Murrays agreeing to vacate the property within two years to facilitate the council demolishing it.
Three days before they were to vacate, the Murrays issued a case against the council, claiming there was new evidence relating to land sterilisation agreements made by the previous owners of the land that invalidated the council’s planning refusals.
Last year the High Court granted a council application to strike out that case as frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of process.
In the Court of Appeal judgment on Tuesday, Mr Justice Allen said the couple built a 6,220 sq ft house without planning permission, “well knew” they would need permission “but hoped they would get away with it”.
The Murrays claimed, as a result of actions, inactions and misrepresentations by the council, they had acquired a “pig in a poke” title to the lands, he said.
While a planning condition for a nearby residence stated an agreement sterilising (preventing) the lands from any other housing or non-agricultural development should be entered into – and the council relied on that in refusing permission to the Murrays – it was accepted no sterilisation agreement was ever entered.
There was “no justification” for contending the council misrepresented the case to the court, he said.
The Murrays had not appealed the original permission refusal to An Bord Pleanála or sought to judicially review it, he said.
They had had “every opportunity” to make whatever case they thought they had; the courts had considered all they had to say but the Supreme Court had, in 2017, decided the house “had to come down”.
While they argued in this appeal that adequate account was not taken of their new evidence, there was no appeal against the High Court conclusion it would not have affected the original outcome.
At the heart of their opposition to the council’s enforcement procedures was a grievance with the refusal of their original planning application but, as a matter of law, that grievance was “not justiciable”.
Any infirmity in the original refusal could not conceivably have provided any justification for unauthorised construction of a house, still less one twice the size, he said.
It was “perverse” that the Murrays, having “driven a coach and four” through the planning Act, were complaining the council failed “to strictly comply with the prescribed procedures”.
A “so-called constitutional challenge” concerning the council’s use of section 160 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 in its proceedings was unrelated to the new evidence, he said.
The couple’s fresh permission retention applications were not relevant to whether their proceedings raised a fair issue to be tried, he held.
The couple had not identified any error in the decision under appeal, the court concluded.
