Ms Sonya Mallon:

As Mr. Breen said, all of this culminated, and as we have already spoken about it at the committee, in the 2019 High Court decision but after that decision was made Bord na Móna applied for planning permission. The process requires a three-step process whereby one must apply for leave for substitute consent. Substitute consent then follows once leave is granted and then planning permission for peat extraction activity is the third step.

In December 2019, Bord na Móna made applications and applied for leave for substitute consent. Leave was granted in April 2020 for the substitute consent leave applications. That leave was subsequently challenged in the High Court and the High Court quashed our leave applications on 7 May 2021. By that time, in June 2020, we had already made applications to An Bord Pleanála on foot of the leave that we had been granted initially. The successful challenge to the leave stage meant that those applications had to be withdrawn. As Mr. Breen has said, that decision was ultimately made for Bord na Móna in terms of the quashing of the leave applications for substitute consent.