Documents filed recently with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) purport to show that two directors of the Beef Plan Movement have resigned, with new directors being put in their place.

Documents filed early in December seem to indicate the Alan O’ Brien and Enda Fingleton – the latter of which is recognised as one of the Beef Plan Movement’s representatives on the Beef Market Taskforce – have both resigned.

The filings also say that two new directors have been appointed, namely Jason Fitzgerald and Emmanuel O’Dea. A scanned document accompanying these papers includes a signature from Beef Plan co-founder Hugh Doyle.

However, sources close to Fingleton and O’Brien have indicated that they have not resigned, and have given no indication or notice that they have or intend to do so.

In the long-running internal dispute in the Beef Plan Movement – which kicked-off around this time last year – the two pairs of directors are known to be on opposing sides.

The two ‘appointed’ directors are considered ‘on the side’ of co-founder Doyle and his supporters (with the other co-founder, Eamon Corley, being associated with that side of the dispute); while the two ‘resigning’ directors are associated with, among several others, Dermot O’Brien (the other beef taskforce member alongside Fingleton) and Eoin Donnelly.

CRO ‘not determinative’

On its website, under a heading titled ‘Disputes between company directors’, the CRO noted that it occasionally receives contradictory information from directors within the same company as to the resignation or appointment of other directors.

This normally happens when directors of a company are in dispute.

The CRO says: “Typically, each set of disputants demands that the CRO should abide by their version as to the identity of the company’s officers and should reject the version as notified by their opponents. There appears to be an underlying assumption in all of these cases that the parties believe that the CRO register is determinative as to the identity of a company’s officers.

“This leads to factions filing conflicting [forms] for the purpose of ensuring that the CRO register will record the company’s officers as notified by the faction concerned. The CRO register is not so determinative, however,” the agency highlighted.