IFA defies court ruling without rebuke from politicians

There is no regard for the rule of law among the farming community, said Mr Justice Diarmuid O'Donovan on Monday. He was commenting on the continued defiance by the IFA of his order to desist from blockading meat factories around the State. It was perhaps unfair of him to single out the farming community for the disregard for the rule of law and, specifically, his order of the previous Wednesday applied also to the entire political establishment. This includes the Government, the Attorney General and the Opposition.

Yesterday, members of Fine Gael, most notably the Fine Gael TD for Longford-Westmeath, Louis Belton, showed where his sympathies lay by visiting farmers on the picket line.

The Fine Gael spokesperson on agriculture, Paul Connaughton, on RTE radio at lunchtime, repeatedly avoided questions about the illegality of the protest and went on to offer encouragement to the farmers.

The Fine Gael leader, John Burton, commenting on the dispute yesterday morning, merely called on the Taoiseach to get involved in attempting to resolve the dispute between the farmers and the meat processors - not a word about the brazen continuing defiance of the rule of law.

From the outset of the High Court's injunction last Wednesday prohibiting the picketing, the IFA leadership sought to defy the court. Anticipating that the court might attempt to enforce its order by imprisoning the leaders of the IFA, Tom Parlon, the president of the organisation, said the farming community would meet the imprisonment of farmers for defying the order with "total resistance".

On Friday, Mr Justice O'Donovan imposed a fine of £100,000 on the IFA for each day the organisation continued to defy his order. The IFA announced the defiance would continue. On Monday, Mr Justice O'Donovan increased the fine to £500,000 for each day the defiance continued. The IFA backed down.

Throughout this open defiance of the law and of the courts, there was not a word of rebuke from the Minister most involved in the affair, the Minister for Agriculture, Joe Walsh.

Commenting on Friday on the IFA's conduct over the previous few days, Mr Justice O'Donovan remarked on the silence of Joe Walsh in the face of such lawlessness. "I would have thought he would at least have paid lipservice to upholding the law," he said. He might well have gone on to comment on the silence of our other leaders.

The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, returned from his foreign travels at the weekend. On Monday he had an opportunity to comment on the defiance by the IFA of the courts, instead he murmured a few words about the necessity for compromise between the IFA and the meat processors. The "law and order" Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue, had nothing to say about that open defiance of the law. Still less did he order the Garda to intervene to enforce the court order. Not one of the leaders of the Opposition uttered a word of rebuke. Indeed, as far as I know, not a single TD did. So it seems that if a powerful institution such as the IFA, with 80,000 members throughout the State, opts to defy the law and, specifically, court orders, as far as the political establishment is concerned this is OK, or at least unremarkable.

What if, for instance, this was done by a group of Travellers. If Travellers, en masse, defied a court order, say, to leave a particular area, what would the official and media response be? If refuse collectors defied a court order preventing them from blockading rubbish dumps, what would the response be?

How can it be OK for farmers to engage in open defiance of the law and the State - as far as the political establishment is concerned - and it not to be OK for groups with lesser political clout to do so?

A few months ago two judges of the superior courts were forced by the political establishment to resign because what they did (or in one case not for what he did but for what might have been perceived) was deemed to have been "damaging to the administration of justice". How damaging to the interests of justice was it for the Taoiseach, the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Justice, the Attorney General, all the other members of the Government, each of the leaders of the Opposition and every one of the other members of the Dail and Seanad (as far as I am aware) to utter not a word of rebuke for the open and flagrant defiance of the law by a powerful organisation?

The only person who comes out of this well is Diarmuid O'Donovan, the judge involved in the case, who saw clearly the significance of what the IFA was about and had the resoluteness to face it down.

Mr Justice O'Donovan is no strutting, self-regarding, precious member of the judiciary. He is a modest, quiet man, who sees it as his duty to uphold the law, even when nobody else seems to want to. Of course the meat processors had treated the farmers appallingly and the farmers' grievance was entirely justifiable. Had they engaged in the legitimate action of withholding cattle from the meat factories they would have been entitled to do so and would have deserved our support in so doing.

Indeed, there is reason to wonder how the meat companies have got away for so long. There is strong evidence of a cartel arrangement between them in fixing the price of cattle. One of the few clear conclusions to emerge from the beef tribunal report was that the Goodman organisation had engaged in a concerted practice of tax malpractice. Arising from this finding, nobody was prosecuted and not even the most elementary sanctions under the companies Acts were taken against the people identified as being responsible.

The farmers are right to feel aggrieved on many scores including this, but that does not give them the right to defy court orders and does not justify the politicians, who had not the guts to confront the Goodman group, to back off also over the farmers' defiance of the rule of law.

e-mail: vbrowne@irish-times.ie