Galway traffic

FIE GIVEN STAY ON FURTHER WORKS ON GALWAY N6 RING-ROAD 

High Court Justice Humphreys this morning granted a stay on any further works on the N6 Galway City Ring Road as he allowed a Judicial Review of the project by Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE].

Justice Humphreys also allowed FIE an additional Junior Counsel because of the ‘voluminous’ nature of the documentation.

The Review comes nine years after the previous ring road was quashed by the European Court of Justice on the grounds that it would result in the lasting and irreparable damage to the integrity of the protected natural habitats. 

The new scheme was applied for in 2018 and granted permission by An Bord Pleanála in December 2021. Galway County Council estimates the road will take three years to construct at a cost of at least €600 million and would involve a number of tunnels, as well as a viaduct over the River Corrib, a designated European nature conservation site.

The challenge comes from the conservation charity Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE), the group behind Climate Case Ireland. It is based on the failure of An Bord Pleanála to comply with the very significantly enhanced emissions reduction ambition adopted by the government in climate change legislation last year as well as the Habitats Directive.

FIE successfully had Ireland’s original National Mitigation Plan struck down by the Supreme Court in 2020 for being, according to the then Chief Justice Frank Clark, ‘excessively vague’.

Grounds for the legal challenge

FIE has told the High Court that An Bord Pleanála failed to act consistent with Ireland’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions as set out in the Climate & Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021 and the Climate Action Plan 2021, and the clear commitments in national policy to invest heavily in modal shift away from roads and private cars, and towards public transport, walking and cycling infrastructure.

‘The answer to Galway traffic problems lie in proven measures, such as better public transport and the ongoing push for pedestrianisation and bicycles lanes – not in more and bigger roads,’ Helena Murphy if FIE said.

‘This project totally flies in the face of all of our environmental targets and undermines our compliance with the Habitats Directive as well as our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Developing roads in a climate crisis is just irrational, no matter how much one seeks to greenwash it.

'It is incredibly frustrating that groups like FIE have to resort to legal action to make bodies like An Bord Pleanála accountable to the law. These types of projects and developments divert investment away from the urgent investment we need to make in reducing our emissions and are self-evidently relics of the past fossil fuel era, and ones we should be urgently abandoning. The Welsh Government, for example, recently announced that it is to stop all new road building projects while it conducts a wide-ranging review in the face of our ever-deepening climate emergency.

'We need to heavily invest in encouraging and enabling safe cycling, efficient public transport, not more roads bringing ever more traffic and more sprawl that will lock-in more emissions.”

‘This project, which is acknowledged by An Bord Pleanála to lead to an increase in emissions which cannot be fully mitigated, is contrary to Ireland’s climate commitments under Irish and European law, as well as the 2015 Paris Agreement. An Bord Pleanála hasn’t yet looked up to see the climate catastrophe hurtling towards us.”

Other grounds in the challenge include Ireland’s failure to set site specific conservation objectives of European nature conservation sites, which meant that An Bord Pleanála could not have reached a valid determination that the proposed ring road would not have an adverse impact on sensitive habitats, and failure to comply with the European Union’s TEN-T Regulations in respect of climate change resilience.

Delays

Ms Murphy also criticised the delays in legal proceedings due to the insufficient number of Judges - ‘FIE is well aware of the impact of a legal challenge’s delay, but delays to large projects are not due to protestors, but to the failures by the Board and the lack of Judges in the High Court.’

'An Bord Pleanála reported that in 2021 it spent €8.2 million in legal costs (including almost €4 million paid to successful parties. Yet it has won just two of the 36 Strategic Infrastructure Development cases finalised to date', according to FIE.

FIE pointed out that in an interview with Parchment magazine, published by the Dublin Solicitors Bar Association in July 2021, Ms Justice Mary Irvine said the High Court was in “a desperate scenario” because of the shortages. Minister for Justice Heather Humphreys passed legislation last month which provided for five new High Court judges, and possibly six, and said it was “one of the largest increases in judges in recent memory”. However, this is eleven or twelve less than the seventeen Ms. Justice Mary Irvine said was required “to make a real difference.”