Court overturns six month jail order over dumping

The Supreme Court has overturned an order directing that a man be jailed for six months for contempt unless he removes a “huge” amount of polluting waste illegally dumped by an unconfirmed party on a disused quarry site on his family farm lands in Co Laois.

The jailing application, made by Laois Co Council, has been sent back to the High Court for a full re-hearing in light of the court’s findings on legal issues.

The three judge Supreme Court stressed it was ordering a re-hearing in circumstances including there was no dispute Colm Hanrahan was in contempt of the clean up order.

It was “inescapable and shocking” that between 960-1840 tonnes of deletrious and polluting waste illegally dumped remains on the lands in an unchanged state three years later, Mr Justice Nial Fennelly said.

However, the High Court had “impermissibly blurred” the distinction between civil and criminal contempt in how it ordered that Mr Hanrahan should be jailed for a fixed period of six months unles he fully complied with the remediation orders.

It was clear the jail term was imposed for coercive purposes, the judge said. When a jail term is imposed by way of punishment for civil contempt, certain legal principles apply, including that mere inability to comply with an order does not amount to serious misconduct, he stressed.

While Mr Hanrahan had produced “sketchy” evidence of being of “meagre means” without the necessary finance to do the clean up, that evidence was not contradicted by the Council. It also appeared unjust that the High Court, when considering his claims of financial inability, appeared to have been influenced by his mother’s ownership of the farm and that some 100 acres were in the family.

All these matters should be further explored by the High Court, the judge said.

In a concurring judgment, Mr Justice William McKechnie said the manner in which Mr Hanrahan, his father Noel, now deceased, and mother Geraldine had engaged with the case was “wholly unsatisfactory, entirely self-serving and scarcely credible”.

One could be forgiven for thinking naivety had been “extended to a new level” arising from their claim of being unaware of illegal “large-scale” dumping by lorries on their lands 150 yards from their famyard, he added.

The Council, which has estimated the clean-up costs as €300,000, had in 2011 taken proceedings against Mr Hanrahan and his parents Noel over illegal waste dumping on a disused quarry site located on their family farm lands at Graigueadrisly, Rathdowney, Co Laois.

All three denied any knowledge of the dumping, on an area of about an acre, of waste including shredded plastic, domestic processed waste, metal, constrcuition and demolition waste and windblown litter.

That denial was “simply impossible to believe”, Mr Justice Fennelly said. Inspections had concluded the waste presented a moderate risk of significant pollution with potential to migrate to the groundater system and cause significant pollution, he noted.

Following failure of the Hanrahans to comply with a 2012 High Court order to remediate the site, contempt proceedings were initiated against all three but were ultimately pursued only against Colm Hanrahan as his father died in May 2013 and his mother is in poor health.

Last September, Mr Justice John Hedigan directed Colm Hanrahan be jailed for six months for contempt unless he complied with the clean up order.

In opposing the committal application, Mr Hanrahan said he had a lease of the lands for seven years from October 2007 but a bad dispute with his father over his marriage breakdown prevented him occupying them between 2009 and his father’s death in May 2013.

He also suggested the dumping originated in an agreement between his father and another man which, he said, was limited to removing sand from the disused quarry. A particular waste company was behind the dumping, he alleged.

His father’s claims that he, Colm, was responsible for the operation of the lands at the relevant time arose from his father’s concern that tax reliefs which had been availed of could be recovered, he added. He insisted he did not have the financial means to do the necessary remediation works.

Mr Justice Fennelly said Mr Hanrahan had failed to produce any evidence to support his claim the waste was dumped by a waste company on foot of his father’s alleged arrangement with another man.