The High Court has reserved its decision on an application by the Irish Sugar Company for an interlocutory order restraining the Irish Farmers' Association from organising any withdrawal of supplies of sugar beet from the company's two plants in Mallow and Carlow.
Mr Justice O'Donovan said he hoped to deliver judgment within a few days.
In the meantime, he continued an interim order granted earlier this month restraining the IFA and nine named members - IFA president Tom Parlon, Michael Berkery, Elaine Farrell, William French, William Maher, Peadar Jordon, Bernard Halvey, Martin O'Regan and George Williamson - from taking steps which could lead to farmers withdrawing supplies from the company.
In a dispute over payments for sugar beet, the State's estimated 3,740 beet growers have suspended all beet deliveries to the two ISC plants since November 7th last.
Yesterday, Mr Richard Nesbitt SC, for the defendants, asked the court to give "short shrift" to the ISC application. The dispute was all about money, he said.
Counsel argued the court was being used to solve a commercial problem for which there was a commercial solution. The company wanted beet delivered to its factories, but was not prepared to agree a price with growers. That price should have been agreed before deliveries began.
What the ISC was really trying to do was to renegotiate, through legal action, the terms of the contract it had signed with growers last April. It had made no attempt to bring the price issue to arbitration but, instead, had come straight to court. The court should refuse the application.
Mr Paul Sreenan SC, for the company, disagreed the proceedings were about money and contended the action was about unlawful means by the IFA to get what it wanted.
Efforts to arrive at a price for beet had not borne fruit but there were appropriate mechanisms for resolution of this situation, he said. Although the growers had not invoked the arbitration clause in the contract between them and the company, that did not mean they were not entitled to invoke it.
There was no clause in the contract that the price had to be agreed by a specific date, Mr Sreenan said. But, because there was no agreement on price, this did not discharge the growers from their responsibility to deliver beet to the factories.
He believed the growers, if removed from "unlawful intimidation or exhortation" to breach their contract would in a short space of time resume deliveries. This might not happen immediately but they would do so in their own financial and economic interest rather than let the beet rot in the ground.