Hundreds of apartments near Dublin Mountains get go-ahead from High Court

A judge has cleared the way for a development of more than 400 apartments near the Dublin Mountains after rejecting a third High Court challenge to a third planning approval.

Ballyboden Tidy Towns Company Limited By Guarantee (BTTC) initiated the latest challenge in November 2025 over permission for a development including 402 apartments at the former Augustinian seminary at Taylor’s Lane, Ballyboden.

The permission, granted by An Coimisiún Pleanála to Shannon Homes Dublin Unlimited Company, was the third concerning the development, the previous two having been successfully challenged by Ballyboden Tidy Towns Group (BTTG).

The BTTG and a local residents’ group obtained court orders in January 2022 overturning permission to build 486 apartments on the same plot on grounds including failures to properly consider public transport capacity for the area.

The matter was sent back to the board, but a second judicial review challenged the planning body’s October 2023 approval for a development of 401 units in three apartment blocks of up to five storeys.

In February 2025, the commission conceded that challenge on grounds of legal errors in its approval. After further consideration, planning approval was given by the commission on September 22nd, 2025, subject to 31 conditions.

Among its grounds of challenge to that third permission, BTTC claimed the commission’s inspector, with whom the commission agreed, erred in law in finding the development involved no material contravention of the county development plan (CDP) in respect of housing density.

In his judgment, published on Friday, Judge Richard Humphreys said the applicant had instituted 10 planning judicial reviews against a range of housing projects and a further challenge to flood relief works in south Dublin. Six of the 10 cases so far had resulted in orders quashing the relevant permissions and costs orders, he said.

The BTTC, the judge said, described itself as a non-profit company dedicated to the protection of the built and natural environment of Ballyboden and the greater Rathfarnham area.

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Having considered the arguments and the law, the judge said the main “insuperable” problem with the applicant’s case was that it had failed to show the development site was not a built-up urban area.

The CDP provision at issue should be read as supporting higher density in areas within the existing footprint of Dublin, including suburbia, and not as limited to areas close to suburban centres or transport nodes, he said.

In their decisions, the commission’s inspector, and the commission itself, were clearly exercising “an evaluative judgment” as to the appropriateness of the proposed housing density at the site having regard to a range of policy guidance, the judge said.

Even if there was a legal flaw, Humphreys said he would exercise the court’s discretion to refuse to overturn the permission for reasons including that it would be “disproportionate”.

Both the local council and the commission considered the project to be acceptable, he said. There is “an urgent public interest in the provision of housing”.

The managing director of Shannon Homes had, in a sworn statement, said he had been approached by a “representative” of the residents of Ballyboden/Glendoher who had told him the residents did not oppose the proposed development.

Noting the applicant had previously secured a number of costs orders in the litigation, the judge said his provisional view on costs in this matter was that each side should pay their own.

Final costs orders will be made later.