A claim by two gold mining companies for £2 million damages against Mayo County Council was dismissed by Mr Justice Peter Kelly in the High Court yesterday.

Glencar Exploration plc, Dublin, and Andaman plc, Belfast, had sought to recover £1,938,264 they had spent on exploring for gold in townlands near Westport on foot of prospecting licences obtained from the Minister for Energy.

They claimed their efforts had been brought to nought by a decision of Mayo County Council in 1990 amending its County Development Plan to ban mining where quarrying would seriously injure the environment, water resources, aquaculture, tourism and employment.

Mr Justice Kelly said the High Court in 1992 had held that the council acted beyond its legal authority in introducing the ban and had declared it null and void. The prospecting companies had gone on to assert they were entitled to recover damages against the local authority on the grounds of misfeasance in public office, breach of statutory duty, negligence, breach of legitimate expectation and wrongful interference with their constitutional rights.

Mr Justice Kelly said there was no dispute but that the two companies had carried out extensive prospecting on foot of the Minister's licences and that they had achieved encouraging results. He held that the adoption of the mining ban had caused the project to collapse.

Judge Kelly said the tort of misfeasance in public office was committed where an act was performed by a public official, either maliciously, or with actual knowledge that it was committed without jurisdiction and was done with the known consequences it would injure the plaintiff.

The applicants had not made out that, in imposing the ban, the elected members of the county council had been actuated by malice or had a realisation that what they were doing amounted to an abuse of office.

Mr Justice Kelly said the alleged breach of statutory duty arose under section 19 of the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act 1963 which dealt with the obligation of the local authority to make a plan indicating development objectives for its area.

While the Act created a duty in favour of the general public to devise a plan, nowhere did he find either expressly or by implication that it created any duty which the legislature intended to be enforceable by an individual in a claim for damages.

With regard to damages claimed for common law negligence Mr Justice Kelly concluded that the imposition of the mining ban had been done negligently. He said the provision of the mining ban, which was nothing more than a crude exclusionary policy applicable to all minerals regardless of their method of extraction, was unnecessary in that the existing planning code was sufficient to protect all legitimate planning interests.

Mr Justice Kelly said that in concluding the council had been negligent in doing something which no reasonable authority would have done he had to consider whether that negligent act had been done in the context of a duty of care having been owed to the applicants, the only context in which a right to damages could arise.

On the authorities opened to him it would be neither fair nor reasonable to suggest there had been any duty of care existing between the council and the mining companies when the ban had been imposed. At that time the companies concerned had not even been applicants for a planning permission and had no guarantee they would ever become so. Judge Kelly also held that the only possible legitimate expectation the two companies might have had was that if they applied for planning permission they would get a fair hearing. At the time of the ban they were nowhere near even making a decision in principle as to whether it would be commercially feasible to seek planning permission.

Even if there had been a legitimate expectation, damages would not be available as a remedy in respect of it because of the absence of any contractual or similar relationship between the parties. Mr Justice Kelly also held that the applicants' property rights under the Constitution had not been unlawfully interfered with.