{"id":542465,"date":"2026-07-10T09:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T09:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542465\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T09:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T09:09:11","slug":"judge-insists-an-coimisiun-pleanala-falsified-records-in-aughinish-alumina-case-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542465\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge insists An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la \u2018falsified\u2019 records in Aughinish Alumina case \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A High Court judge has declined to withdraw a section of a judgment in which he accused An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la<\/a> of submitting \u201cfalsified\u201d records to the court in relation to a case involving Aughinish Alumina<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last month, Judge David Holland struck down a decision of the planning authority<\/a> to grant permission to Aughinish in Co Limerick<\/a> to extend the height of its bauxite residue disposal area, where it stores the byproducts of alumina productions, by up to 12 metres.<\/p>\n

In his judgment, he also found An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la had inadvertently submitted inaccurate documents to the court.<\/p>\n

He found there was \u201cmaterial falsification\u201d of signed meeting records provided by the commission and that it had therefore failed in its duty to \u201ckeep a written record of all its decisions\u201d.<\/p>\n

The issues arose due to the use of computer software that automatically updated the names of attendees at planning meetings. The use of this software resulted in incorrect records of attendance at meetings being generated and submitted to the court.<\/p>\n

Holland said the software problem was \u201cclearly systemic\u201d and \u201cunlikely to have been a one-off lapse\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile such things can happen in well-regulated environments, it should not have persisted had its operation thereafter been monitored and supervised,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt should have readily been spotted by those in the Commission daily using the system. It should not have required litigation to unearth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge said he was not accusing the board of submitting incorrect information on purpose, but that nevertheless the records received by the court were \u201cfalsified\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI repeat that, in using the word \u2018falsified\u2019, I describe the effect of the software. I suggest no malign intent. But, subject to that observation, the word is accurate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After the judgment was issued on June 25th, lawyers for An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la asked the judge to amend the judgment to remove the finding that documents had been \u201cfalsified\u201d.<\/p>\n

The commission argued the word implied an intent to deceive \u201cwhich was simply not present in respect of the records in issue\u201d.<\/p>\n

Holland has declined to withdraw the finding. <\/p>\n

However, in an unusual move, he has now added a postscript to the judgment addressing the matter.<\/p>\n

The judge reiterated he was not accusing the planning authority of deliberate deception and stated he had made this clear in his original judgment.<\/p>\n

He rejected the board\u2019s complaint, but said he was \u201chappy to yet again repeat and yet again emphasise\u201d that he was not alleging deception. <\/p>\n

It is the second time software issues have affected the long-running case, which was brought against the commission by Environmental Trust Ireland.<\/p>\n

During one Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la meeting, the board became aware that the initial inspector\u2019s report relating to the extension of the site at Aughinish had been generated using the artificial intelligence<\/a> software ChatGPT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In response, the commission \u201cdecided that it was unsafe to rely on that report\u201d and to have a new report compiled by a different inspector, Holland\u2019s judgment said. The initial report was destroyed, though was later recovered.<\/p>\n

Holland wrote that the destruction of the report was done with good intentions to prevent it \u201ccontaminating the subsequent report\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, he said its destruction was \u201cill-judged by reference to the Commission\u2019s statutory obligations of record-keeping and was open to misinterpretation as an attempt to minimise criticism of the Commission\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A High Court judge has declined to withdraw a section of a judgment in which he accused An…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[75,218,163884,72,2670,73,61,60,1396],"class_list":["post-542465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-an-coimisiun-pleanala","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-aughinish-alumina","tag-business","tag-chatgpt","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-limerick"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}