Ruling by the court has potential implications for other land banks
Ministerial dezoning overturned
The planning regulator is considering the implications of a High Court ruling that a ministerial order to strip a north Dublin site of its industrial-type zoning should be quashed, it said.
The ruling came in a case taken by father and son pair Timothy and James Fitzgerald who originally bought the land on the Dublin-Meath border from Nama to develop a food-industry oriented business park on the site.
The planning regulator had intervened when Fingal County Council rezoned the site – and two others – under its county development plan to allow for employment generation and the Department of Housing had ordered the county council to revert the zoning on the proposed 52-hectare food park site at Coolquay to green space.
The implications are not yet clear for the other sites affected by the rezonings
The planning regulator had written to the minister to say that there was already enough zoned land in the area for employment purposes.
?The Fitzgeralds sought judicial review of these actions by the Department of Housing, the Office of the Planning Regulator and Fingal County Council – and the ruling by the court to quash them has potential implications for at least the two other land banks.
“The Office has accepted this judgment, the implications of which are being considered and we have no further comment to make at this time,” said a spokeswoman for the Office of the Planning Regulator.
Sources said that the court ruling came after the government department told the court in affidavits that the controversial order should be overturned at Coolquay.
The written judgment in the case has yet to be published, explaining the court’s reasons for the certiorari order quashing the dezoning of the sites by the county council following the ministerial order, and so the implications are not yet clear for the other sites affected by the rezonings, according to sources.
A spokesman for the Department of Housing said “agreement has been reached between the applicant, the Office of the Planning Regulator and the Minister and the direction issued by the Minister to Fingal County Council as it applied to certain lands at Coolquay will be quashed and the lands will be zoned for employment use in accordance with the decision of the local authority.”
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