Dunraven Limerick Estates Company v Commissioners of Public Works

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Court: Supreme Court
• Judgment Date: 21 December 1974
• Docket Number: [1969. No. 1411 P.]
• Date: 21 December 1974

(S.C.)

Dunraven Estates

and

Commissioners of Public Works

Scheme - Particulars - Arterial drainage - Whether landowners given sufficient information - Whether scheme invalid - Arterial Drainage Act, 1945 (No. 3), ss. 4, 6.

The Arterial Drainage Act, 1945, empowers the defendants to prepare and implement drainage schemes for the improvement of land. The Act stipulates at s. 4 that in every scheme prepared by the defendants they should show (inter alia) the lands, easements and other rights to be affected by the scheme. Section 6 of the Act provides that the defendants shall serve, on every owner of lands or rights to be affected by the scheme, a notice informing him that the scheme proposes an interference with such land or right and describing fully the said land or right and the proposed interference. The defendants prepared the Maigue catchment scheme and served notices on the plaintiffs who were owners of lands to be affected by the scheme. The scheme described the intended works in general and vague terms such as "the construction, if and as required, of weirs in the following townlands." The notices served on the plaintiffs were not more specific than the scheme. In an action brought in the High Court the plaintiffs...