The High Court judge who delivered the judgement on the judicial review around planning permission for a Glanbia cheese plant at Belview has said that An Taisce’s “real grievance is with Government policy”.

“A major issue in the appeal was that meeting the State’s climate targets requires reducing the national herd of cows and not increasing it and that the dairy industry overall is unsustainable due to the adverse environmental impacts created,” Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said.

He said that there was no scientific evidence put before An Bord Pleanála board to contradict the natura impact statement (NIS) of the plant.

The judge cited the report from the An Bord Pleanála inspector in which she said that the “supply of milk to the proposed development will not result in any additional emissions beyond what is currently projected by the Government and that the appellant is challenging issues of policy outside the scope of the appeal”.

Planning law

“Many of the obligations of planning law relate only to individual projects.

“The high standards of scrutiny of particular development consents don’t apply to more general issues arising from overall programmes that are not site-specific in the same way,” he said.