Farmers' compensation case over foot-and-mouth dismissed

THE HIGH Court has dismissed a test case to determine if hundreds of sheep farmers on the Cooley peninsula in Co Louth are entitled to additional compensation over the culling of their sheep flocks as a result of the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.

The judge said the State was required to put in place a scheme of compensation which was fair, reasonable and proportionate to the situation. While he accepted these farmers had not been fully compensated, he believed the scheme was proportionate in all the circumstances and amounted to a reasonable delimitation of the farmers property rights.

Mr Justice Brian McGovern ruled that two farmers – Brendan Rafferty and John Elmore – had not established they were entitled to compensation beyond that already received by them for the market value of their sheep.

Mr Rafferty lost 695 ewes and received a £145,244 compensation while Mr Elmore lost 199 sheep and received compensation of £29,495.

While he found the losses suffered by both men went beyond the mere market value of their animals, he believed the compensation awarded was proportionate in all the circumstances and did not unreasonably delimit their property rights. The courts should distinguish between compensation based on fault and compensation to address hardship where there was no fault, he added.

In this case, the farmers had not shown the State acted in bad faith or that the compensation scheme was irrational or insufficient.

If the State was obliged, as a matter of legal or consequential law, to compensate farmers for full consequential loss, this would have “enormous implications” for the exchequer and impose a serious and disproportionate burden on the taxpayer, he said.

The court was entitled to take into account that many other people, including in the tourism sector, had suffered financial losses as a result of the foot and mouth outbreak and had received no compensation for them.

Mr Justice McGovern was delivering his reserved judgment on actions by Mr Rafferty and Mr Elmore against the Minister for Agriculture and the State.