Foran v An Coimisiún Pleanála: Evidence, “Have Regard”, and Climate-Consistency Challenges in Planning Judicial Review

1) Introduction

Foran v An Coimisiún Pleanála & Glenveagh [2026] IEHC 23 is a High Court planning judicial review in which the applicant, Mr Shane Foran (a cycling advocate and local resident), sought to quash An Coimisiún Pleanála’s decision to grant permission for a Large-scale Residential Development (“LRD”) by the notice party, Glenveagh Living Limited, at Gort Na Bro, Rahoon, Galway.

The dispute was driven by objections to the road and cycling infrastructure design associated with the development, particularly the use of two-way cycle tracks on one side of certain roads and the use of shared pedestrian/cycle elements (including a toucan crossing).

Procedurally, Mr Foran initially pleaded broader challenges, including attacks on DMURS and the Sustainable Mobility Policy 2022, but those grounds were abandoned. The case ultimately proceeded on:

  1. Ground 1 (Planning and Development Act 2000, s.28): alleged failure to have regard to the Spatial Planning and National Roads Guidelines and/or failure to give reasons for not following them.
  2. Ground 2 (Climate legislation): alleged inconsistency with the Climate Act 2021 and Climate Action Plans, and/or failure to give reasons.

The judgment is notable for how it polices the boundary between merits and legality, and for its treatment of (i) the evidential burden in technical planning disputes, and (ii) the emerging s.15 Climate Act “consistency” duty in cases that, at bottom, concern design choices within a local transport layout.

2) Summary of the Judgment

Mr Justice David Holland dismissed the judicial review. The court held, in substance, that:

  • The claim was predominantly a merits disagreement about cycling design choices (two-way vs one-way facilities, shared space, toucan crossing), which is not for the court to re-decide in judicial review.
  • Mr Foran’s criticisms depended heavily on technical/engineering opinions about cyclist behaviour, safety, and design adequacy; but he did not adduce admissible expert evidence and did not cross-examine the developer’s expert engineer (Mr Noel Gorman).
  • Ground 1 failed: Mr Foran did not rebut the presumption that the Commission had regard to the Spatial Planning and National Roads Guidelines, and his cumulative-impact case was, on the evidence, hypothetical.
  • Ground 2 failed: even taking Coolglass Windfarm Limited v An Bord Pleanála [2025] IEHC 1 “at its height”, the alleged climate inconsistency was not established on admissible evidence; and in any event a dispute about the directionality/location of cycle tracks over a short stretch fell within the planning authority’s evaluative space and was not shown to have a discernible climate impact.

The judge indicated a provisional view that there should be no order as to costs and listed the matter for final orders.

3) Analysis

3.1) Precedents Cited

(a) Judicial review is not an appeal; irrationality is a very high bar

The court anchored its approach in the consolidation of principles in Reilly v An Coimisiún Pleanála & Lark Finance [2025] IEHC 659, including the recurring warning that it is easy to present a factual/merits complaint in legal clothing. The judgment then tied those principles to the classic Irish planning JR canon:

  • The State (Keegan) v Stardust Compensation Tribunal [1986] IR 642: irrationality means a decision “fundamentally at variance with reason and common sense”.
  • O'Keeffe v An Bord Pleanála [1993] 1 I.R. 39: merits review is sharply constrained; planning judgement is for the expert decision-maker.
  • Holohan v An Bord Pleanála [2017] IEHC 268: the court cannot quash for irrationality merely because it considers the decision “simply wrong (or even clearly wrong)”.
  • The judgment also referenced the “almost never met” threshold described in The Board of Management of St. Audoen's National School v An Bord Pleanála [2021] IEHC 453.

This frame was decisive: the applicant’s objections were treated as quintessential “design merits” disagreements rather than demonstrable legal error.

(b) Reasons and the “main issues” standard

Mr Justice Holland drew extensively from Rural Residents Wind Aware and Environmental Group v An Coimisiún Pleanála & White Hill Wind [2025] IEHC 600 (“RWWA”/“RRWA” in the judgment) as a detailed statement of the modern reasons jurisprudence, itself built on: Connelly v An Bord Pleanála [2018] IESC 31, Balz v An Bord Pleanála [2019] IESC 90, and Náisiúnta Leictreach Contraitheoir Éireann (NECI) v Labour Court, [2021] IESC 36.

The key point applied here was pragmatic: reasons must address the main reasons on the main issues, may be found in an inspector’s report, and need not be a submission-by-submission essay. In this case, the inspector’s report captured the traffic/roads controversy and the Commission adopted it.

(c) Presumption that relevant matters were considered: GK and Rana

The court relied on the presumption of regularity line: G.K. v Minister for Justice [2002] 2 I.R. 418 and, more recently, Rana & Ali v Minister for Justice [2024] IESC 46. Where the decision-maker indicates it considered the file/materials, an applicant must produce evidence (direct or inferential) to displace that presumption.

This presumption was central to rejecting the contention that the Commission failed to have regard to the s.28 national roads guidelines: the roads-guidelines issue had been alive throughout the process (TII submissions, a council refusal reason, the appeal, and the inspector’s treatment), making “non-regard” improbable absent cogent evidence.

(d) “Have regard” vs compliance: Cork County Council

For Ground 1, the court applied Cork County Council v Minister for Housing, Ireland and the Attorney General, [2021] IEHC 683 to reinforce that a s.28 duty is generally one of regard, not compliance. That mattered in two ways:

  • Even strong language within guidelines does not “pull them up by the bootstraps” into mandatory rules.
  • The judge accepted that the Commission’s task is to factor the guideline’s relevance/weight into an evaluative judgement, not to mechanically implement it.

(e) Evidence in technical disputes; non-expert assertions

The dismissal leaned heavily on evidential principle, including:

  • RAS Medical Ltd v Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland [2019] 1 IR 63 (conflict of evidence and the onus in affidavit-only trials).
  • The line of authority excluding party “expert evidence” for lack of independence, cited via Duffy v ABP & McDonagh [2024] IEHC 558, Environmental Trust Ireland v An Bord Pleanála [2022] IEHC 540, and Murphy v An Bord Pleanála [2024] IEHC 59.
  • Massey v An Bord Pleanála (No. 2) [2025] IEHC 206 (a non-expert may point to a patent flaw on the face of materials, but cannot establish contested technical error by assertion).

These cases supplied the mechanism for the court’s central move: treating the applicant’s predictions (e.g., cyclists will ignore the tracks; conflict with buses will ensue; safety will deteriorate) as inadmissible opinion where they required expert traffic/engineering assessment.

(f) Climate Act s.15: Coolglass and the “practicable consistency” qualifier

For Ground 2, the court engaged directly with Coolglass Windfarm Limited v An Bord Pleanála [2025] IEHC 1 and also referenced Mount Salus Residents v An Bord Pleanála, Minister for Housing, OPR & Smyth [2025] IEHC 14 on “practicable” and evaluative judgement.

The judgment accepted the seriousness of the s.15 obligation post-2021 amendment (moving from “have regard” to “consistency, insofar as practicable”), but emphasised that the applicant must still establish inconsistency on admissible evidence and within a workable conception of “practicable” in a multi-policy planning context.

3.2) Legal Reasoning

(a) The “real case” was design merits, not illegality

The court treated the dispute as, at its core, a challenge to a set of engineering and planning trade-offs: whether the cycle facility should be one-way on both sides versus two-way on one side, and the acceptability of shared facilities and a toucan crossing. That kind of disagreement—without pleaded irrationality and without expert proof of legal defect—was characterised as an attempt to use judicial review as “the next stage” of a planning appeal.

(b) Pleading discipline mattered (especially for irrationality and EIA)

Although the court was generally willing to read the litigant-in-person pleadings fairly, it enforced core limits: Ground 1 did not plead irrationality or EIA defects, and so those could not be bolted on through submissions. The judgment thereby reaffirms a practical rule for planning JR: technical arguments must be (i) pleaded, and (ii) evidenced in admissible form.

(c) Ground 1: s.28 “have regard” was not rebutted; cumulative impact case was speculative

The applicant’s theory was that the Commission failed to grapple with cumulative traffic impacts arising from the interaction of the development and the proposed N6 Galway City Ring Road Scheme. The court accepted, in principle, that the Spatial Planning and National Roads Guidelines could encompass “planned” national roads (not only “approved projects” in EIA terms).

But the claim failed on facts and proof:

  • The issue had been live: TII’s objections, the council’s refusal reason, Glenveagh’s appeal response, the RfI/RRfI engagement with the N6 project team, and the inspector’s analysis.
  • Applying Rana & Ali v Minister for Justice [2024] IESC 46 and G.K. v Minister for Justice [2002] 2 I.R. 418, the applicant did not provide evidence sufficient to displace the presumption that the Commission had regard to the guideline.
  • The applicant’s cumulative-impact assertions (including reliance on traffic forecast figures) were not translated into admissible proof of a material incremental impact attributable to the permitted LRD.

(d) Ground 2: climate-consistency requires proof; “discernible impact” and practicability

The judgment’s most “new law” flavour lies in how it locates s.15 Climate Act consistency within an evidential and practical framework.

  • The court was sceptical of the Commission’s order phrasing that it “had regard” to the Climate Action Plan 2023 (because s.15 demands more than regard), but did not treat that drafting point as dispositive.
  • Even assuming the strongest reading of Coolglass Windfarm Limited v An Bord Pleanála [2025] IEHC 1, the applicant had to show that the challenged design choice had a discernible impact on climate goals and that a more climate-consistent alternative was practicable.
  • On the record, and especially given the absence of admissible expert evidence, the case reduced to a non-justiciable merits disagreement about cycling infrastructure layout over a short distance.

3.3) Impact

(a) A sharpened evidential message for “active travel” planning challenges

The decision signals that cycling-infrastructure objections—however sincerely held—will rarely succeed in judicial review unless they: (i) identify a concrete legal duty (not merely best-practice guidance), and (ii) are supported by admissible expert evidence where technical judgement is engaged. Litigants cannot convert guidance non-compliance into illegality without an actual legal hook.

(b) Climate Act s.15 will not automatically “constitutionalise” design disputes

Post-Coolglass Windfarm Limited v An Bord Pleanála [2025] IEHC 1, there is a tendency to see s.15 as a powerful new tool in planning litigation. Foran is an early counterweight: it indicates that s.15 arguments must still clear basic hurdles—pleading, admissible evidence, and a meaningful link between the impugned decision and climate outcomes. The court’s “no discernible impact” framing is likely to be cited by respondents where s.15 is invoked against relatively localised, design-level choices.

(c) Administrative practice: prescribed bodies’ submissions

Although not central to the ratio, the judgment contains unusually direct judicial criticism of TII’s “boilerplate” planning submissions, suggesting an expectation that prescribed bodies’ interventions should be specific, informative, and decision-useful—particularly where housing delivery is implicated. This commentary may influence how such bodies draft future submissions, even if it does not create a standalone ground of review.

4) Complex Concepts Simplified

  • Judicial review vs appeal: judicial review tests legality (process, powers, reasonableness in the Keegan/O’Keeffe sense), not whether the judge would have designed the scheme differently.
  • Irrationality (Keegan): a very high threshold—something “overwhelming” is required; “wrong” or “clearly wrong” is not enough.
  • “Have regard to” (s.28 guidelines): the decision-maker must consider the guideline and give it such weight as it thinks appropriate; it is not usually required to comply with it.
  • Presumption of consideration (GK / Rana): if the decision-maker says it considered the materials, the challenger must produce evidence to show it did not.
  • Climate Act s.15 (“consistent, insofar as practicable”): stronger than “have regard”, but still qualified by practicability and still dependent on evidence and context. Not every planning design choice will be treated as materially climate-determinative.
  • Expert evidence and independence: even if a party has expertise, they generally cannot act as their own expert witness because the law requires independence in expert opinion evidence.

5) Conclusion

Foran v An Coimisiún Pleanála & Glenveagh [2026] IEHC 23 is best read as a disciplined restatement of limits: planning courts will not re-litigate engineering design merits under the banner of legality, and they will insist on proper pleading and admissible expert evidence where a challenge depends on technical propositions.

Its principal doctrinal contribution is its early calibration of Climate Act s.15 in a “micro-design” setting: even after Coolglass Windfarm Limited v An Bord Pleanála [2025] IEHC 1, s.15 does not eliminate the need to show a meaningful, evidenced inconsistency and to confront the “practicable” qualifier in the real planning world of constraints and trade-offs.