A High Court judge has indicated that a farmer is "entitled" to recover his legal costs from the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine after successfully defending judicial review proceedings.

The case originally stemed from two statutory notices served by the minister over a duck egg production business.

Both notices were served after a suspected outbreak of Salmonella Hessarek at a farm.

The farmer, John Fitzgerald, pursued an appeal against each of the statutory notices to the District Court.

During the appeals the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) presented evidence from officials who carried out sampling at the farm, scientific experts who analysed the laboratory tests and whole-genome sequencing, and a senior veterinary expert.

The farmer also gave evidence and called his own expert witnesses.

The court found that the manner in which the samples had been collected fell far short of DAFM’s standard operating procedures.

It referred to the absence of evidence that a face mask or respirator had been worn, the conflicting accounts as to when “overboots” had been donned, the uncertainty as to whether and when gloveshad been worn, the absence of evidence of handwashing between duck houses, and the uncertainty as to whether the samplers had read or were familiar with the relevant standard operating procedures.

Court

The Minister for Agriculture launched judicial review proceedings in a bid to overturn the District Court order, while also pursuing a separate appeal to the Circuit Court.

The judicial review proceedings came before Justice Garrett Simons earlier this month.

In his judgement delivered on July 24 Justice Simons stated that the Minister had "not identified any convincing reason" why the dispute in relation to the statutory notices should be determined by way of judicial review rather than in the pending Circuit Court appeal.

"Accordingly, the application for judicial review will be dismissed," Justice Simons stated.

The judge also said his provisional view was that the farmer was "entitled" to recover his legal costs from the Minister after successfully defending the judicial review.