Council must pay costs of 10-year court battle

A 10-YEAR court battle rooted in a proposal to convert a milking parlour into a pet crematorium has ended with a Supreme Court decision ordering Wicklow County Council to pay substantial costs of a row between councillors and the county manager.

While three individual councillors – Thomas Cullen, Patrick Doran and Nicky Kelly – could not escape some liability for some of the “utterly wasteful and expensive course” they had initiated against the manager, their costs bill should be reduced somewhat, Mr Justice Donal O’Donnell also ruled.

The proceedings were a “disaster” and had led to “a very sorry situation for all concerned”, the judge added. The case, he said, “should act as a salutary lesson to those who insist on seeking to litigate matters of supposed principle, particularly when they seek to do so with other peoples’s money”.