There's a planning saga I've lived alongside, since it involves friends of mine. It is nearly 20 years since they first applied to open a cave with a magnificent stalactite, underneath land they'd bought, as a tourist attraction in a part of Co Clare where the only commercial activity is tourism.

They got permission from the county council. The permission was appealed by objectors but my friends got permission from An Bord Pleanala in 1993.

It transpired that they had to take the seller to court . . . a phrase which covers much expense and the disruption of trip after trip to Dublin to hang around the Four Courts.

Near the end of the lengthy process, the judge died. The whole thing had to start again and by the time the matter was settled, planning permission had run out.

In 1999 they applied again. Much time, money and expertise went into the new application. The county council gave permission.

The objectors objected. An Bord Pleanala turned the application down on the grounds that it needed certain exploratory work. My friends were eventually advised that the kind of exploratory work the board wanted didn't need permission and Clare County Council allowed them to go ahead and do it.

But the objectors went to the High Court to establish whether it was, in fact, an exempted development.

At one point during that longdrawn-out case my friends gave the court a commitment that they'd stop any other work on the cave when they'd stabilised the work done so far . . . they were still not far from the beginning. But the objectors sought an injunction against the stabilising work . . . so quickly that their barrister could not contact my friends, who learned about it after the event.

On a Friday, an interim injunction was granted. On the following Monday this was converted to an interlocutory injunction . . . one which means nothing can happen until there's a hearing. My friends' barrister could not be in court that day and they had no representation.

For the next few years my friends had to suspend everything and make the long, and expensive, trip to Dublin to be at the Four Courts when the case was up for mention 10 or 12 times. But nothing ever happened.

On none of those occasions did the objectors manage to be ready to proceed.

There never was a hearing of the issues in contention.

The non-heard case went on so long my friends revised their planning application and got full planning permission. And . . . the happy thing in this story . . . the stalactite cave is now a unique tourist attraction, and one which attracts praise for its sensitivity from serious environmentalists.

But in 2005 there was at last a final hearing, which turned out to be about costs . . . the actual case still wasn't aired. My friends were told they were responsible for the objectors' costs . . . which are very, very considerable, since the objectors employed top-class legal representation.

Like many other lay people, my friends came out of court absolutely stunned. To this day, they don't really understand when and how they became liable for the objectors' costs. Nor do they know what would have been the case if the opposite had happened and the objectors had been deemed to be liable for my friends' own . . .

huge . . . costs, since the objectors have never been in a position to pay.

This is a general problem where there is a 'costs' regime . . . there isn't one in the USA. What do some litigators have to lose, even if they lose?

There is no obvious moral to draw from this story. It is far more disturbing that it raises the hard question of whether there's a kind of diffuse and vague aspect to planning disputes which, moving as they do in and out of the courts, attracts inordinate delay and confusion.

It has taken the best part of the prime of my friends' lives to get a modest commercial enterprise up and running.

Such profit as it makes is now supposed to go to pay for what was, ultimately, an unsuccessful challenge.

Can't there be a better way of seeing that everyone's rights, in complex matters like these, are safeguarded?