GOLDEN Vale, the Munster cooperative, last night admitted it paid £3.1 million to the Department of Agriculture because it incorrectly calculated its superlevy milk bill over a two year period.
The Minister for Agriculture confirmed in the Dail last night that an audit of the industry had discovered the miscalculation, but the shortfall had been paid with interest.
Farmers are fined £1.38 a gallon when they over produce milk and this year they have been charged £12.5 million.
Mr Yates had earlier told reporters in Kinnegad, Co Westmeath, that Golden Vale was involved and that the Kerry Group had also breached quota regulations. But, he said, it would be unfair to compare the Kerry situation with Golden Vale because there was "no comparison between the two cases".
The Minister said the amount of milk involved was between two to five million gallons out of the 1.118 billion gallon national quota. The breaches had been uncovered in a departmental investigation of the sector, he said.
He said the investigation would be completed within weeks and would concentrate on breaches of EU regulations relating to milk quota and superlevy, and national regulations.
Mr Yates added that the EU had been kept informed of the investigation. He told the Dail that any impression from the media that the EU might impose fines for breaches of the superlevy rules was incorrect.
He also said one of the companies involved (Kerry), had correctly calculated its superlevy bill and had paid it to the Department and the EU in the normal way.
Some national rules in regard to the administration of the quota had not been correctly applied, but the audit outcome had no financial impact," he said.
Brendan McGrath, Markets Editor, adds: Shares in Golden Vale may be in for a sharp fall when they next trade. Company shares fell 3p to 62p in thin trading yesterday, but were well offered at that level as the market closed with brokers reporting a bid level for the shares as low as 55p.