The Supreme Court has refused permission for a government appeal against a lower court’s ruling that approval for a gas storage facility in Co Antrim should have been taken by the entire Executive and not a single minister.
Then Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots in 2021 granted approval for the construction of seven large caverns under the surface of Larne Lough near Islandmagee..
Following a legal challenge by the No Gas Caverns group, the Court of Appeal in June found that the proposed development cut across several departments and therefore the decision to grant permission should have been decided by the entire Executive.
The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) asked the Supreme Court to be allowed to lodge an appeal but on Friday was refused permission to do so, effectively upholding the Court of Appeal’s findings.
Islandmagee Energy, the developers of the project, is a subsidiary of Harland & Wolff, currently in administration.
Agriculture Minister Andrew Muir, in a statement on Friday, said his department’s application “did not relate to the environmental merits of the decision” but was focused “upon the constitutional issues arising”.
Those issues, the minister said, included “the potentially very significant implications for the decision-making threshold of individual ministers.”
“It will take time to fully understand the implications for my Department and the wider functioning of government,” Mr Muir said.
Lisa Dobbie, of No Gas Caverns, said the Supreme Court decision “underscores the power of communities to affect change.
“Ordinary people had to take extraordinary steps to protect people, place and plane,” she told the BBC.
