The Supreme Court has rejected a couple’s application for a further appeal aimed at preventing the demolition of their large Co Meath home built in “wilful breach” of planning laws almost 20 years ago.
Chris Murray and his wife Rose sought a further appeal after the Court of Appeal (CoA) ruled last August there was “no merit” to their appeal before that court.
Mr Justice Senan Allen, in that CoA decision, said the appeal concerned an action which, while initiated in September 2022, was “the latest battle” in a 20-year dispute about the fate of the unauthorised development at Faughan Hill, Bohermeen, Navan.
After being refused permission in 2006 to build a house on the lands, the couple, “undaunted, and in wilful breach of the planning laws”, built a house anyway of about 588sq m (6,220sq ft), twice the size of the property for which permission was refused, the judge said.
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Meath County Council took proceedings in 2007 under section 160 of the Planning Act 2000 and the Supreme Court in 2017 upheld High Court orders for them to remove any unauthorised development from their land.
They were given one year to vacate the property and, 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.
The High Court last year granted a council application to strike out that case as frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of process and refused injunctions restraining further action or proceedings by the council pending a further hearing concerning their new evidence.
Among its findings, the High Court concluded the new evidence would not have affected the outcome of the planning refusals. It also held their challenge to the constitutionality of section 160 could not succeed.
After they lost their appeal to the Court of Appeal against the High Court decision, they asked the Supreme Court to hear a further appeal.
In a determination published this week, the Supreme Court refused to permit further appeals by the Murrays.
Having set out the history of the case, it said the couple had failed to engage with the High Court and CoA findings that they could have raised any challenge to section 160 at the time it was invoked by the council and when it was litigated in the superior courts. They did not do so then and had “offered no reason why they should be permitted do so now”.
Contrary to what they argued, the hearing of an application under section 160 is not a criminal trial, the court said. The couple were not prosecuted for any offence, whether minor or serious, and claims made otherwise were “without foundation”.
The orders sought by the council under section 160 were not “sanctions” or “penalties”; they were directed at removal of a building erected without regard to the planning laws, the court said. The purpose of an order under section 160 was to enforce the planning laws by undoing unauthorised development.
The argument that the appeals raised points of law of general public importance and that an appeal is in the interests of justice are “manifestly misconceived”, the court said.
