The Supreme Court has begun hearing an important test case concerning the ownership of milk production quotas and the right to lease such quotas.
Three milk quota owners have appealed the High Court judgment of December 15th last by Miss Justice Carroll.
She had ruled that the purpose of the creation of the milk quota system was to regulate and restructure milk production within the EU, not "for the creation of a new form of landlordism which would allow the owner of a quota to live off the rent obtained therefrom without producing a single gallon of milk".
She held the Minister was entitled to decide quotas should go to active milk producers.
None of the three appellants is now a milk producer but they have leased their milk quotas. They are Mr Nicholas Philip Maher, Mr Malachy Brett and Ms Rita Ryan.
Mr Maher owns 130 acres of land at Mountpleasant, Cashel, Co Tipperary and had leased that land and milk quota from 1996.
Mr Brett owns, jointly with his wife, 77 acres at Fethard, Co Tipperary, and leased some of that land and quota.
Ms Ryan owns some 20 acres in Co Tipperary with an attached quota which she has leased.
Presenting the appeal against that decision yesterday, Mr Gerard Hogan SC, for the quota owners, said the new rules on milk quotas were a form of compulsory purchase by the State which had extinguished his clients' rights to engage in a perfectly legitimate measure of temporary leasing.
He said the State was contending that, because his clients were not active milk producers, the Minister's action was justified. That point, he contended, was "more apt to beguile than convince".
The case was not really about milk quotas, it was about the separation of powers between the executive and legislature, counsel argued. "It is a plain example of the democratic deficit where the executive has usurped the clear role of the Oireachtas in our system of government, which protects the democratic character of the State."
Mr Hogan was asking the court to protect the integrity of the system of parliamentary democracy and not allow key decisions of policy to be made by the executive.
The hearing continues today.