Leaders of the Orange Order are spearheading a scheme to sell orange lily bulbs packaged in soil from the site of the Battle of the Boyne.
Several Orange lodges and prominent individuals in the Order bought 80 per cent of the shares in a company, Shaderoe. That gave them control of 27 acres of fields the company owns at Drybridge, part of the Boyne battle site near Drogheda.
Company directors include prominent unionist peer Lord John Laird of Artigarvan; David Mahon, Grand Master of the Orange Order in Donegal; and Stewart Griffith, a leader of Carricknahorna Orange Lodge near Cashelard in Co Donegal, which once included in its membership the maternal grandfather of just-retired British prime minister Tony Blair.
Shaderoe aims to market the lily bulbs worldwide, but mainly in Canada where the Orange Order is strong, in the same way as entrepreneurs have packaged sods of Irish soil for sale to Irish-Americans.
Mr Mahon said the 27 acres they already control will be used by picnickers visiting the Battle of the Boyne site.
He added that Shaderoe intends purchasing another 500 acres with the intention of developing Orange lily bulbs for export.
Mr Mahon, who will lead the Orange Order's only annual parade in the Republic in Rossnowlagh on July 7th, the last Saturday before the Twelfth, said: "We have established that there is great interest in Canada and other countries in the project.
"The idea is to package, say, a dozen lily bulbs and soil as genuine products of the Battle of the Boyne site and sell them abroad at around €100 a time.
"Individual lodges would produce packages and the marketing would be under the control of the Orange Order." He denied a Sunday newspaper report that Shaderoe is in any way linked to shadowy figure Lorrain Esme Osman, a former bankrupt who spent some time in jail in England while awaiting extradition to Hong Kong on charges linked to a multimillion dollar finance scam.
But he agreed that one of the directors is another former bankrupt, English part-time journalist Kevin Cahill, listed by the Irish version of his name, Caoimhín Séamus Ó Catháil, on the Shaderoe file lodged with the Company Registration Office in Dublin.