Stateline Transport loses appeal despite warning of ‘catastrophic’ effect on economy if facility ceases operation
Stateline Transport has lost the appeal against a High Court ruling that ordered it to cease illegally storing as many as 2,000 freight containers at the site.
The company – which has no planning permission for the operation – warned that closing it could have “catastrophic” consequences for the Irish economy.
Stateline, owned by the Brady family, developed a two-acre site in Ballymun leased from Tesco at a cost of €850,000 as a storage site despite a “flagrant” breach of planning laws and continued development of the site even after Fingal County Council had told it to stop, the court noted.
“It is difficult to regard the making of such a significant investment in a site which did not have planning permission for the business the appellant was running on it as anything other than a deliberate breach of the planning laws,” said the Court of Appeal.
In a judgment last November, the High Court declared the development by Stateline to be unauthorised and ordered the activity at the site to cease. The court granted a four week stay in the event of an appeal, and thereafter, allowed a period of six weeks for the removal of the containers on the site.
The court refused a request from Stateline to give it until October this year to remove the containers.
The company had contended that it was in the public interest to allow continued use of the site for the storage of freight containers as it insisted it was an important part of the transport logistics infrastructure in Ireland.
Stateline claimed that due to a shortage of container space in Dublin, the costs and delays that would arise if its customers had to look elsewhere for storage facilities could present a systemic shock to Ireland’s imports and exports, with catastrophic effects for the regional and wider Irish economy, producers and consumers.
The company maintained that the High Court did not correctly apply principles of discretion available to it in respect of section 160 of the planning and development act, which allows any person or planning authority to seek through the High Court or Circuit Court an order requiring an unauthorised development to cease or not to proceed with it.
Today’s News in 90 Seconds – February 28th
That discretion, argued the company, would allow the High Court to postpone the coming into effect of a relevant order under section 160 in a manner that would allow development that has been found to be unauthorised to continue.
Stateline relied on evidence, including an affidavit provided by US-based economics expert Dr Constantin Gurdgiev, who is an adjunct professor of finance at Trinity College, in the High Court. It contended that the High Court had failed to give the company a fair opportunity of dealing with concerns regarding that evidence raised by the Court before rejecting it.
The High Court had expressed concerns about the basis upon which Dr Gurdgiev was instructed in circumstances where Stateline had not adduced any independent evidence of the claimed public interest in the unauthorised development prior to the hearing and that his report was produced in less than six days.
