Cork County Council -v- Shackleton and Murphy Construction.

This case concerned the number of social housing units which Murphy Construction was obliged to transfer to Cork County Council under social and affordable housing legislation. The High Court ruled in favour of the Council, making an order to quash the award of the Respondent arbitrator, who had accepted the basis of calculation of number of social housing units which Murphy Construction had proposed. The High Court made no order of costs on the basis that whilst the Respondent had been unsuccessful, the case had served to clarify the law. The disputed legislation was unclear and difficult to construe, and this is the reason why the the arbitrator was wrong, the basis for that error being an incorrect interpretation of s. 96 of the Planning and Development Act, 2000. Though the interest which Murphy Construction sought to protect was its own commercial interest in minimising the number of houses which it would transfer under the social and affordable housing legislation, the Court accepted that "test cases" may arise where there is doubt as to the proper interpretation of the law and where circumstances giving rise to these doubts arise frequently. Where both parties to the dispute are private, there may be no good reason for departing from the ordinary costs rule. However, different considerations apply where one of the parties is a public authority. This litigation was necessitated by the fact that the social and affordable housing legislation was unclear and difficult to construe. The Judge commented that whilst costs lay in the courts' discretion, any judicial discretion ought to be exercised against a background of appropriate principles, to enable the discretion to be exercised in a reasoned way.