By Gordon Deegan

A High Court judge has commented that boundaries are as sacred in rural Co. Kildare as they are in Crimea or the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts in Ukraine.

Justice Richard Humphreys made his comment when quashing a planning retention grant of permission by An Coimiúsin Pleanála (ACP) to farmer, Paul Fitzsimons for a farm building that includes a calf creep at Ballysooghan North, Rathangan, Co. Kildare.

In the long running planning/land row between Fitzsimons and two of his neighbours, Judge Humphreys has quashed the ACP grant of retention in June 2025.

The judge quashed it due to Fitzsimons’s removal of a hedge along the boundary dividing the two properties and ACP’s inadequate condition to address the removal and putting in place a new boundary structure.

The farm building at the centre of the planning dispute comprises a fuel store, a workshop, a calf creep area, straw bedded loose housing, a feed passage and slatted underground effluent tanks. 

Fitzsimons also secured planning retention for an existing silage base and unroofed slatted effluent tank with all ancillary work as constructed.

Objections

The objectors claim that Fitzsimons removed the hedge along the boundary in 2019 and the two told Kildare County Council that they brought to the attention of Fitzsimons that they were ‘devastated’ by the hedge removal “and wanted our hedge and boundary reinstated”.

Their appeal against the council's grant of permission for the farming building to ACP ran to 130 pages including appendices.

In his written 18-page judgement on the neighbours’ High Court judicial review of the ACP grant, Judge Humphreys said it is reasonable to emphasise that nobody should unilaterally remove party boundary structures, hedges or trees. 

He said: “Boundaries are sacred – that is as true in Ballysooghan North as it is in Crimea or the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts."

Judge Humphreys said that the removal of the party boundary hedges was a main issue in terms of the impact on the two neighbours.

The judge said that ACP’s provision for boundary treatment made sense if there was no prior boundary hedge, “but given the lack of consideration of whether the outcome will actually be fully comparable to the previous boundary that was removed, the applicants’ essential complaint under this heading is made out”.

High Court ruling

Judge Humphreys stated that the ACP inspector’s report does not address the complaint that the pre-existing hedgerow was unlawfully removed or how the proposed new boundary treatment will compare to that.

The judge said that the ACP condition concerning a new boundary “did not address whether the outcome will actually fully rectify the removed hedgerows in a way that is wholly comparable with the removed party boundary”.

Judge Humphreys stated that to use the judicial review applicants’ words, the ACP condition “to some degree rewards without a proper basis the removal of a party boundary”. 

He said that the reward “is the uncertainty that the new boundary treatment will be fully comparable to the old, and the possibility that it won’t be”.

In his ruling, Judge Humphreys noted that there are ongoing proceedings in the circuit court in relation to the alleged unauthorised development between Kildare County Council and Fitzsimons. 

He said that there are also ongoing circuit court proceedings between the two neighbours involved in this case and farmer Paul Fitzsimons for alleged nuisance and destruction of property.

Judge Humphreys has ordered ACP to pay the costs of the applicants in the case.