A developer and the owners of a “highly sensitive” site in south Co Dublin have lost their appeal against orders requiring them to remove 29 houses built without planning permission and to remediate the site.The judge’s decision means the structures will have to be removed within six weeks. High Court Judge Richard Humphreys said this was a “particularly egregious case” of disregard of planning law “not made any better” by “non-reality based” sworn evidence that, like the Party’s “most essential command” in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, asked him “to reject the evidence of your eyes”.His judgment displayed two photographs, one showing a mobile home on the site, when it was previously used for mobile homes and chalets, and the second showing “a completely different structure, a dwelling house”.Any reasonable person “would plainly see that they are different structures” but the developer and owners adopted a “nonsensical” approach in arguing they were in essence the same structure and representing the 29 dwelling houses as “maintenance/improvement/alteration” of the mobile homes, he said. As South Dublin County Council had submitted, this was “gaslighting on a monumental scale”. In separate proceedings heard together, the council and a local resident, John O’Neill, who lives about 200m from the development at Chianti Park, Mount Seskin Road, Brittas, had claimed it was unauthorised and wanted all units should be removed with the sites restored.It was alleged the 29 units appeared to be phase one of an intended development of 71 residential units at Chianti Park and an adjoining site.Their applications for removal were unsuccessfully opposed in Dublin Circuit Civil Court by Branach Developments Ltd, the developer, with a registered address at Thomastown, Caragh, Kildare, and the site owners, Mullnassa Limited and Threshford Limited, both with registered addresses at Rock Road, Blackrock, Dublin.In his December Circuit Court decision, Judge John O’Connor rejected claims the disputed works were refurbishments, found the developments consisted entirely of new structures and there was “very serious redevelopment and transformation of the site without planning permission”.He expressed significant concern that, notwithstanding the council having acted promptly last year in respect of the development, the respondents in contrast not only continued their development works but had intensified their building. After O’Connor made orders for removal of the units and remediation of the site, a stay on those orders applied pending the appeal to the High Court.In his judgment published on Wednesday, Humphreys dismissed their appeal.On top of the “nonsensical” approach adopted, he said matters were not improved by the fact the unauthorised works occurred in a “highly sensitive setting”, zoned “high amenity-Dublin mountains” in the South Dublin County Development Plan 2022-28. Nor was the situation made better by the “almost unbelievable chutzpah” of the developers who even now claimed “innocent mistake” even though they ignored or deflected warning letters and had intensified construction of the unauthorised development “in the teeth of interventions” from the council and residents and during the Circuit Court proceedings.“This is as far from innocence as you can get, this was an attempt to create a fait accompli with a view to turning around and defiantly asking the system, in effect, ‘what are you going to do about it?” he said. “I suppose, like many other people who deny planning law, the respondents are now going to find out.” Despite a “majestic doctrinal exercise” by way of defence, the facts of the case meant it made no difference. The respondents were defeated by the “egregious nature” of their own conduct and the inevitably adverse factual findings that flowed from that. Having concluded the appeal should be dismissed, he said the sides can provide submissions regarding final orders before those are made later this month but stressed the final orders cannot go outside the terms of his findings.He directed the respondents to submit, by June 10th, a detailed draft plan for remediating and landscaping the site.