Local residents have taken a High Court challenge to a high-rise development on a prime site in central Dublin. They claim they are suffering the consequences of the nation's tallest buildings being built in "a race against the clock".
Ms Vera O'Connor of Towns end Street, one of the residents challenging Dublin Corporation's decisions on the partially-built, multi-storey office site between Townsend Street and George's Bank on the south bank of the Liffey, said the site remained derelict for nearly a decade as successive developers sought ever greater development of it.
Ms O'Connor said developers were granted a 10-year planning permission in 1991 for the site but they did not use the permission, which aimed at the co-ordinated phasing of the development.
She has sought an order quashing the corporation decisions of January 7th and February 11th and is seeking declarations that they exceeded the corporation's jurisdiction. She also wants declarations that the corporation's compliance orders allowing redesigned face and elevational treatment of three tower blocks are an unlawful material alteration to the proposed development.
Ms O'Connor, a retired machinist and chairperson of the tenants' association, said that in 1998, when developers Borg Developments Ltd was refused permission for a taller scheme than allowed by An Bord Pleanala in 1991, Borg had reverted to the 1991 permission which it is now trying to complete before time runs out next March. Most of the development would, therefore, not be built in a phased or co-ordinated manner.
But the corporation had "unlawfully permitted the developers to proceed with a development in respect of which no application for planning permission was ever made".
Dublin Corporation says Ms O'Connor is debarred from obtaining the reliefs she is seeking by her failure to apply promptly. It also denies the elevational treatment or proposed facades of office tower blocks constitute an unlawful material alteration to the 1991 permission.
The matters agreed between it and Borg under the terms of the original permission do not warrant a fresh planning permission or public consultation, it claims.
Borg, a notice party to the proceedings, says a substantial part of the development envisaged by the 1991 permission has now been erected in accordance with that permission. It says the compliance orders are neither invalid nor unlawful.
The hearing continues today before Mr Justice O'Neill.