Ryanair fails to get permission to appeal €200m Dublin Airport under

High Court reporters

A High Court judge has refused permission for Ryanair to appeal the rejection of its challenge to a proposed €200 million cargo under at Dublin Airport.

In February, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys dismissed the airline’s challenge to An Bord Pleanála’s decision to approve the Dublin Airport Authority's planned 1.1km tunnel, which is to run beneath the “crosswind” runway.

The DAA says the tunnel is needed to improve access and safety on the airfield and to facilitate segregation of aircraft and ground vehicles.

In March, the judge heard an application from Ryanair to reopen his judgment on the basis of what it said was a material error.

During the hearing of that application, the judge said Ryanair "pragmatically (and due credit to it), acquiesced in clarifications" which had been discussed in the court.

The airline also accepted that the matter could proceed to the leave to appeal stage without the need to progress the re-opening of the matter fully.

Following another hearing on the leave to appeal application, the judge dismissed Ryanair's application on Friday.

The judge said this application was "perched precariously on a tiny fragment of the original pleaded case – an alleged infelicity in the (An Bord Pleanála) inspector’s wording on a purely domestic law issue regarding the local area plan".

The question the court had to consider was whether this was a plausible basis for leave to appeal, he said.

In particular, he said the question was whether it was in the public interest that infrastructure designed to prevent motor vehicles from having to cross an active runway should be held up "over a technicality regarding the infelicitous phrasing of the inspector’s wording about something that was not an axis upon which anything fundamental turned legally, and which at worst was just an inaccuracy in choice of words".

The judge added: "In my own perhaps erroneous view, there would be something seriously wrong with our legal system if the answer to that question is anything other than No".

He also said, in dismissing the case, that in the event Ryanair applies to the Supreme Court for leave to bring a leapfrog appeal, and if that court agrees, the costs of the leave to appeal application will be the costs of that appeal.

If no such application is made after seven days, his substantive judgment dismissing the case would be perfected.

Ryanair’s challenge was grounded in the claim that the board’s permission was in breach of the European Commission’s Water Framework Directive, which aims to protect water quality and corresponding Irish regulations, as the appeals board did not ensure the project would not jeopardise the status of a body of surface water.

Mr Justice Humphreys rejected this argument, stating that the airline didn’t demonstrate any factual basis that the project “could have jeopardised the attainment of good water status”.

The airline also maintained in its challenge that the board did not recognise that the proposed development is inconsistent with the Dublin Airport Local Area Plan, as it requires the loss of two aircraft stands.

While the judge said he tended to agree with parts of the Ryanair’s argument on this point, he said the airline relied on Section 37(2) of the Planning and Development Act 2000 in making this argument, a subsection that he said does not apply to cases of material contravention of local area plans.