Error about single bat not enough to halt €1.2bn Ennis data centre – High Court
The High Court has ruled that an error in an An Bord Pleanála inspector’s report concerning a roost containing one Leisler’s bat was not sufficient to halt the Ennis data centre. File picture
The High Court has ruled that a report error concerning a bat located in a barn outside Ennis is not sufficient to halt contentious plans for a new €1.2bn data centre campus.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys dismissed objectors’ claims that an An Bord Pleanála inspector’s error concerning a bat roost containing a single Leisler’s bat — which, in March 2022, was resident in a crack in the external wall of a barn shed in farmland near Ennis, Co Clare — should stop the Ennis data centre campus.
In the first line of his 28 page judgement, Mr Justice Humphreys commented:
Dismissing the objectors’ grounds over the bat, Mr Justice Humphreys described the error about the bat on page 74 of the inspector’s report as ‘harmless’.
He said: “A decision should not be quashed for error (including in application of EU law) if the error was harmless and did not materially affect the result.”
In April 2024, An Bord Pleanála granted planning permission for the scheme comprising six data halls covering 145 acres or 1.3msq ft on lands adjacent to the Tulla road on the eastern outskirts of Ennis near Junction 13 on the M18 motorway connecting Galway to Limerick.
Opponents of the data centre — Colin Doyle, Friends of the Irish Environment CLG, Futureproof Clare, Martin Knox, and Christine Sharp — had sought a High Court judicial review of the appeals board permission.
In October 2024, An Bord Pleanála conceded the objectors’ claim for quashing the board’s data centre planning permission where it admitted that the board erred in law in failing to consider adequately the environmental effects of the proposed development on bat fauna.
However, Art Data Centres Ltd contested the appeals board’s High Court judicial review concession to the objectors.
After a one-day hearing, Mr Justice Humphreys said the case dismissal “is a modest piece of recent legal history in that no previous developer in the State has succeeded in demonstrating as misconceived an objection that the appeals board was prepared to concede”.
He said: “For a certain type of observer, the fate of a single roost containing a single bat will be viewed as a trivial basis for a debate about the validity of the planning permission. That is perhaps understandable at a superficial level but is a misconception.
"The fact that all parties in the present proceedings, and particularly the developer’s professional and ecological advisers, have concerned themselves so assiduously with the outcome for our bat and its roost shows that, despite everything, as far as the state of civilisation in this country is concerned, all is not yet completely lost.”
Mr Justice Humphreys stated that the company’s oral submissions utterly demolish the objectors’ case in just six words: “the potentiality necessarily includes the actuality”.
