Alan Croghan, the first named plaintiff in the High Court case against the exemption given to Townbe for the now abandoned IPAS centre in Coolock, has within the last hour been told that a High Court hearing scheduled for July has been brought forward to Friday, May 23.
The assumption amongst the plaintiffs be that given the hearing being brought forward that the defendants, including the contractor Townbe, are going to withdraw – and that this is directly linked to the earlier statement from the Department of Justice.
The court case has been ongoing since late last year and while the initial ruling by Justice David Holland last October appeared dismissive of the case made by some of the plaintiffs, he accepted the bona fides of Mr. Croghan’s detailed affidavits.
Not only that but, as we have reported previously, the High Court had appeared unhappy with the efforts of Townbe, the State and Dublin City Council to simply have the case struck out on the basis that it had no chance of succeeding.
Mr. Croghan had done considerable research into the site and how issues like the removal of asbestos ought to still be of concern despite the exemption granted last year by Dublin City Council. None of these have been seriously addressed in subsequent hearings and it appears that the defendants were again going to rely on their previous claims the next time they appeared.
As noted earlier, the decision of the State to withdraw from the proposal for an IPAS centre on the former Crown Paints site represents a huge victory for Croghan and the legal proceedings taken against the exemption.
It also testifies to the refusal of the local community to accept a proposal about which they were neither informed of nor consulted about. They, and indeed Croghan and the other plaintiffs, were then subject to a relentless campaign to discredit them.
As Scripture tells us, David sometimes beats Goliath.