MEATH County Council has sought to stop pop concerts being held at Slane Castle which is owned by Lord Mount Charles, the High Court has been told.
Mr Aidan Redmond, counsel for Lord Mount Charles, who brought Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones to Slane, told the court yesterday the council planned to block concerts.
Mr Redmond told Mr Justice McCracken that the council sought to do this in the same way as planners blocked Feile going ahead at the Mondello race track last year.
"Lord Mount Charles is a well known public figure involved in the promotion of open-air concerts at Slane since 1981. The council has now served him with a warning notice claiming that in its opinion such concerts constitute an unauthorised development on his lands and that they would require planning permission", Mr Redmond said.
He said the law on the matter was that after five years the use of the land became no longer susceptible to prosecution under the planning act and that Lord Mount Charles was entitled to continue staging open-air concerts without planning permission.
Mr Redmond said Lord Mount Charles's solicitors, McMahon and Tweedy, had written to the council, which was prepared to allow the concerts go ahead if the law was found to favour their client.
Lord Mount Charles, in an affidavit, said Slane Castle demesne had been used throughout the 1950s and 1960s for an annual festival involving football, athletics, stalls and side-shows.
The first open-air pop concert was staged in 1981 and in eight other years since then until 1995, when REM played. Each concert involved extensive planning and every year a series of planning meetings had taken place with Meath Co Council representatives.
Lord Mount Charles said an average 40,000 fans attended the concerts, providing considerable assistance to the local economy.
All had passed off without major incident.
"This is the first time since 1981 that the council has raised the issue of planning permission even though they have been actively involved in meetings for the planning of the various events since then," Lord Mount Charles said.
Because of this there was no concert at Slane this year. He had since been legally advised he was entitled to stage an annual open-air concert without planning permission and he had told the council he planned to stage a concert in July 1997.
Mr Redmond told Mr Justice McCracken that the council had threatened to take out injunctions against his client restraining him from going ahead with next year's concert. Since Lord Mount Charles was already involved in intensive negotiations and planning for the 1997 concert, he had now decided to seek leave of the court to challenge the legality of the council's warning notice.
Mr Justice McCracken granted Lord Mount Charles an order for a High Court review on whether the council's decision was outside its legal powers.
