A decision by Galway County Council to grant planning permission for a housing estate outside Kinvara town - said to be on a blind corner on a main road to Ballyvaughan and the Burren area - has come in for judicial criticism.

The plan was to build 31 houses on a main road with a 100km/h speed limit and the council's permission also extended a town in an unplanned manner in an important tourist area.

Mr Justice Peter Charleton said that the development would have resulted in the blind movement, in terms of sight lines for traffic, of many vehicle journeys to and from "this suburban-type estate".

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He said it was difficult to see why the court should be required to authorise a public danger or to quash a well-reasoned decision of An Bord Pleanála, which overturned the council's grant of permission.

He dismissed developer Brian McMahon's challenge to the board's November 2009 refusal of permission. The judge also rejected arguments that the High Court, if it finds defects in the procedures leading to the making of planning decisions, has then no discretion but to quash those decisions.

He said the board had very strong reasons for its refusal of permission, including its view that the proposed development would imperil traffic safety, subject the water table to potentially life-threatening contamination or further despoil the countryside with suburban development.

As reported in the Irish Times, Mr McMahon had argued the board should have inquired into the validity of the acknowledgment, but Mr Justice Charleton ruled the board did not have authority under the 2000 Act to make any legal analysis of steps conducted in pursuit of a planning application by a local authority.

(BMcC/KMcA)