What sets us apart?
Danielle Conaghan
Danielle is head of the Environment & Planning Group
"Innovative, hardworking, good grasp of applicable case law, top talent, good at problem-solving, good track record."
The Legal 500, EMEA 2024
We provide creative, commercial and pragmatic solutions to environmental and planning issues to help our clients deliver projects.
We share our clients’ ambitions in wanting to be the best. We understand the 'lie of the land’ and how best to navigate the complex and challenging regulatory regimes across all sectors, including transport, energy and renewables, natural resources and circular economy, biologics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, commercial and residential real estate, food and drink, manufacturing, water and waste water, digital and telecommunications and health and social infrastructure.
Our Group specialises in delivering complex, high risk and first-of-a-kind projects of all kinds. We deliver results by identifying, mitigating and managing risks hand in hand with our clients and their technical advisors, whether we are assisting clients in obtaining land-use consents and operational consents, securing funding, successfully defending or taking judicial review, civil and criminal proceedings. The legal landscape in this area changes at a rapid pace. We understand the existing and pending Irish, EU and international laws and most importantly how they may develop in the future to help clients continually anticipate and adapt their businesses to achieve compliance.
To successfully deliver a project, we work hard with our Litigation, Dispute Resolutions and Investigation colleagues and our clients to engage in early dispute avoidance and dispute resolution, focusing on consultation and early communication with key stakeholders on projects to avoid, insofar as possible, such challenges being taken in the first place. Where challenges are taken, we formulate bespoke defence strategies in collaboration with our clients and their technical advisors to successfully defend them. Our Group has been engaged in some of the most significant environmental and planning challenges litigated before the Irish and European Courts and apply the 'lessons learned’ to all future projects and matters. We have unique expertise in taking and winning precedent-setting cases: on land de-zoning, An Bord Pleanála refusal of permission for largescale solar projects and Environmental Protection Agency determinations that by-products were waste.
"The resources and expertise in Arthur Cox are second to none and it provides top-class legal advice on the most complex of issues."
Chambers Europe 2024