The Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, yesterday won a long-running legal dispute with HMIL Ltd (formerly Hibernian Meats International Ltd) over a 1988 ministerial decision disallowing beef export refunds to the company worth £1.4 million (¤1.78 million).

The case went to the High Court, Supreme Court and the EU Court of Justice before returning to the Supreme Court, which gave its decision yesterday.

The proceedings arose out of the operation by the Minister, as the EU intervention agent in Ireland, of two schemes relating to the storage and export of meat.

In 1988, HMIL was exporting beef to a number of countries, including destinations outside the EU, and had received sums of money from the Minister under both schemes. The first scheme was the Aid for Private Storage scheme (APS) while the second was the Export Refund scheme. Both were intended to ease the problems encountered by beef producers arising out of a beef surplus in the European Union.

Under the APS scheme, payments at a specified rate were made to persons who kept beef in storage for a period. In contrast to the intervention schemes also operated by the Minister for the EU, the stored beef remained the property of the persons concerned and could be disposed of by them at the end of the storage period.

Under the Export Refund scheme, the Minister paid the difference between the market price within the EU and the lower market prices obtainable in the other outside territories to those exporting outside the EU.

Advance payments were made with producers required to furnish certain securities to the Minister. During the 1988 season, HMIL was paid about £5.345 million under the APS scheme, and £16.27 million under the Export Refund scheme.

Following a sampling exercise of the HMIL stored produce, the Minister told the company it had failed to comply with regulations governing the scheme and he was disallowing £240,000 for the APS scheme and £1.l36 million in respect of the Export Refund scheme. He also told HMIL that relevant securities were forfeited.

HMIL then brought an action in the High Court, which it won. This was appealed by the Minister to the Supreme Court, which adjourned the hearing while a number of questions were referred to the EU Court of Justice. Following that court's answers, the Supreme Court yesterday gave its decision.

Yesterday, the Chief Justice, Mr Ronan Keane, said it was beyond doubt that if the Minister had adopted the more stringent interpretation of the regulations now found appropriate by the EU Court of Justice, a significantly greater quantity of cartons would have been treated as ineligible, he said.

The court then dismissed HMIL's claim.