Kimmins not ruling out appeal against A5 court judgment

Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins said she has not ruled out appealing against a court judgment quashing an Executive decision to progress the A5 road upgrade, stating “nothing is off the table”.

During an appearance before her Stormont scrutiny committee, the minister said it would be “irresponsible to blame anybody” following claims that plans for the £1.2 billion road scheme are now a “mess”.

High Court judge Mr Justice McAlinden quashed the Executive move to approve the project on Monday following a legal challenge from a group including residents, farmers and landowners.

The judge said the proposed scheme breached sections of Stormont’s Climate Change Act.

There have been more than 50 deaths on the A5, which links Londonderry with Aughnacloy in Co Tyrone, since 2006.

Infrastructure Committee chairwoman Deborah Erskine said: “It is now a mess, whose fault is it?”

Ms Kimmins said: “Officials provided hundreds and hundreds of pages of scientific evidence, this is the third legal challenge that has been taken against this major infrastructure project which will save lives amongst other benefits.

“At this point in time I think it would be irresponsible to lay blame with anybody.

“We need to carefully consider the ruling. It is a very detailed report, very complex. I have been working immediately to look at what that means.”

Ms Kimmins added: “This is a setback but I want to ensure it is of minimal time and we can get to work as soon as possible.”

DUP MLA Ms Erskine pointed out that vesting of land for the road upgrade began last year.

She said: “Within that intervening period work was able to progress along the route while the High Court case was running. Who made the decision to do that?

“As I look in my constituency, land has been changed to unrecognisable levels. Who made that decision to proceed at risk?”

Ms Kimmins said: “The land was vested and was therefore owned by the department so the works that had commenced were within the law.

“The purpose of that was to ensure we were ready to hit the ground running on the other side of this judgment should it have been a positive outcome.

“Had we not done that, and we had a positive outcome, we were also operating at risk because that would have further delayed the ability to commence construction, which could have impacted on contractors and resulted in higher costs.”

Ms Erskine repeated her query over who made the decision to proceed with the preparatory work, stating land had been left with “tonnes of stone now sitting on it”.

Department for Infrastructure permanent secretary Denis McMahon said he had been content with that decision because he felt the project had needed to move forward.

He said: “I was looking at the advice of officials working with me, I was part of that decision-making process.

“There was always a danger of costs that would be incurred up front, but the greater risk at that stage was if we did not proceed with some of the preparatory works, we would be putting the whole project at risk and given the value of the project, the biggest project in the history of Northern Ireland, it was important that we proceeded as best we could.

“These are always difficult decisions but we have to look at value-for-money arguments in the round.”

Ms Erskine said: “Farmers are now counting the cost of their land being unrecognisable.

“Do you accept now that decision was potentially wrong and is now going to cost the department in terms of the public purse in reinstatement of that land?”

Mr McMahon said: “I accept there will be costs associated with that decision.

“I also accept that where we are sitting today, knowing the information that we know today, would I take that decision today? I am not sure I would, well in fact obviously I wouldn’t cause I know the judgment.

“But at the stage we were at in terms of officials taking that decision, I am content we took the best decision we could at that time.”

Ms Kimmins said the next steps included the land being returned to those landowners.

She said: “The next steps now are, once the judge had ruled to quash the decision and the associated orders, once they are quashed now the land will return to those landowners and letters will go out from the department as there are quite a number of people need to be contacted.

“That will outline the next steps and there will be further engagement in relation to that.”

Ms Erskine asked the minister if she would launch an appeal against the court judgment.

Ms Kimmins said: “Nothing is off the table at this point until we get a clear understanding of what the ruling means, what the key issues are and what the options are to address this.

“We rule nothing in or out at this stage.”