Litigant requests TV cameras in High Court case

The High Court will be asked to allow television cameras to cover proceedings for the first time in a case involving a judicial review against a contentious Dublin residential development.

The application is to be brought by lay-litigant Christian Morris who is fighting a 200 dwelling development planned for the Howth coastline which received planning permission last February, upheld by An Bord Pleanála in June.

Mr Morris secured leave from the High Court to bring a judicial review of the planning decision by An Bord Pleanála last November and the case is listed for hearing in April.

However, at a brief pre-hearing on Monday in the Commercial Court, Mr Morris intends to request permission to invite television news cameras to cover the proceedings on the grounds that the issue is in the public interest and that such a precedent is due.

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Cameras have never been permitted inside Irish courts during hearings and any such activity could only be authorised by a judge. Mr Morris has made two similar applications in unrelated cases, one of which was unsuccessful. The other remains before the courts.

Controversial scheme

The planning permission subject to the judicial review relates to a controversial scheme on the Techrete and Teeling Motors sites near Howth Harbour and Dart Station.

It includes 200 residential properties, 487 parking spaces and a number of commercial units.

Locals fear it will cause severe traffic congestion on routes to and from the popular fishing village, especially at Sutton Cross, and have said it amounts to overdevelopment.

Mr Morris, (43) a lifelong resident of Howth who lives close to the site in question is representing himself in the High Court challenge.

“I believe that the overall plan is entirely unsuitable to Howth,” he told The Irish Times, describing it as a “high rise, high density, cheap downmarket development”.

In an affidavit setting out his reasons for wanting to bring television cameras into court, he said it was “surprising how averse Ireland’s judiciary is to even considering the notion of visual recording”, adding that surreptitious recording is not uncommon.

“I am of the opinion that the matters herein do merit the degree of public exposure that televising would allow.”

In his application for judicial review of the decision, Mr Morris said the scheme would “swamp” the area with cheap housing, the “basic nature of which – mainly buy-to-rent – will be unsuitable for a long established and settled community like Howth”.

It would, he said, bring short-term tenants looking for temporary rentals in a development which would “chronically over-congest a traffic management system which seems to be already near to capacity”.