The developer’s planning risk is concentrated in three moments: the application that wasn’t JR-proofed, the condition that breaks the appraisal, and the enforcement file that stops the site. This page is the developer’s chair — served by a practice that spends other weeks drafting objections and challenges, and therefore knows precisely where applications are vulnerable.
Before the Grant: JR-Proofing as a Design Activity
Judicial review tests the record, and the record is built at application stage or not at all — which makes JR-proofing a design activity, not a repair: screening done demonstrably — EIA and AA decisions taken and reasoned in writing, because screening error is the era’s most fertile ground; participation handled generously rather than minimally, since shortcuts hand objectors their cleanest points; the development-plan position confronted honestly — lurking material contraventions taken through the lawful procedure, not the hopeful gloss; reasons written to be read by a judge; and the consultant reports commissioned with the eventual courtroom in mind. The same discipline governs live opposition: objectors’ submissions answered on the file with evidence, the four-week appeal anticipated in the record, conditions offered proactively where they resolve real concerns and narrow the battlefield — and never procedural gamesmanship against participation, which manufactures the grounds the opposition lacked. The economics are lopsided: proofing costs a fraction of defending one challenge — and when a challenge does come, the defence of your permission runs from this desk, a short walk from where it’s heard.
After the Grant: Conditions, Compliance, Enforcement — and the Structure Underneath
Conditions get two tracks: the first-party appeal targeting the condition that breaks viability while defending the permission that contains it (with the board’s power to revisit the whole grant priced honestly first — sometimes the condition is the cheaper evil), and compliance engagement — the “details to be agreed” discharge process run as the negotiation it is, with contribution conditions handled under their own regimes. Enforcement defence runs the ladder with commercial stakes concentrating everything: the allegation tested against the permission’s actual documents, notice overreach examined, regularisation sequenced commercially — and the operational discipline preached to every developer client: compliance files kept as works proceed, because the developer who can prove compliance ends conversations the developer who merely achieved it cannot. Where section 160 arrives, the firm’s injunction practice supplies litigation speed. And underneath it all, the structure questions settled before the design freezes: applicant identity and estate documented, site assembly mapped (rights of way, ransom strips), the SPV and funding architecture consistent across the planning file — run alongside the firm’s company practice at companysolicitor.ie, with tax structuring sequenced to your accountant early, as with every money question on this site.
An Application in Design - or a Grant Under Pressure?
The proofing is cheapest before lodgement; the defence is strongest started early. A confidential conversation maps the risk, the record and the route - fees agreed in writing before any work begins.
Call 01 5827148