{"id":567800,"date":"2026-07-04T00:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/567800\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T00:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:06:09","slug":"more-than-100-caravans-on-portlaoises-great-heath-must-leave-forthwith-court-orders-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/567800\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 100 caravans on Portlaoise\u2019s Great Heath must leave \u2018forthwith\u2019, court orders \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/high-court\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/high-court\/\">High Court<\/a> has ordered that more than 100 caravans, some of which had been parked on the Curragh Plains in Co Kildare, and then moved on to State land in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/laois\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/laois\/\">Co Laois<\/a>, should leave \u201cforthwith\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Judge Siobhan Stack made the order on Friday following the arrival on June 22nd of the first of the caravans at the 426-acre Great Heath of Maryborough, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/portlaoise\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/portlaoise\/\">Portlaoise<\/a>, opposite the Heath GAA club. A large marquee was also erected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The land is owned by the Minister for Public Expenditure, who obtained interim injunctions on Tuesday requiring \u201cpersons unknown\u201d and 11 named people to leave.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">On Friday, when the case returned, Dylan West, barrister for the Minister, said none of the defendants had turned up in court and he was seeking that Tuesday\u2019s order be made an interlocutory order that will remain in place until the case is fully dealt with. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The land is largely unenclosed and the Minister says it is one of the few surviving semi-natural grasslands in Ireland, supporting diverse plant and animal communities. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Portable toilets and skips were reported by the local council as being delivered to the land and there were no facilities for processing litter and waste.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/office-of-public-works\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/office-of-public-works\/\">Office of Public Work\u2019s<\/a> biodiversity officer indicated that the activity posed a significant adverse risk to the integrity of the ancient and rare grassland habitat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The judge also granted an order restraining the defendants from entering the land again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">She gave liberty to the defendants to bring an application to challenge the order with two days\u2019 notice to the Minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The High Court has ordered that more than 100 caravans, some of which had been parked on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,10476,19,17,11763,11,12,15,16,5,105969,14234,7,8],"class_list":["post-567800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-laois","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-office-of-public-works","tag-portlaoise","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116858794051160100","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}