The plight of wild geese due to arrive from Greenland within the next six weeks has been resolved, the High Court was told yesterday.
Senior counsel Brian O'Moore, for the Minister for the Environment, told Mr Justice Paul Gilligan that an acceptable compromise had been arrived at over court orders sought against Lee Strand Co-Op Creamery, Wexford, on behalf of the Greenland white-fronted geese.
He said the creamery had been restrained from trespassing on the "new" geese reserve in the Slobs area of Wexford and had agreed to have the lands reseeded with grass and prepared for the arrival of the geese.
Mr O'Moore said both parties were now happy with the compromise reached. Under the agreement, weeds will be removed from fields in the new reserve; it will be ploughed and reseeded to prepare for the arrival of the geese from October onwards.
Chris Wilson, warden of the Wexford Wildfowl Reserve on the North Slob, told the court that the State had bought 270 acres on the North Slob in 1968 for the principal purpose of feeding and protecting the large numbers of Greenland white-fronts that winter there.
Another 207 acres had been bought from the co-operative in 1990. This made up what was known as the new reserve.
Mr Wilson said half of the global population of 27,000 Greenland geese winter in Ireland. Last year just over 8,000 geese had wintered on the Slobs.
Between 1997 and 2004 the creamery had rented the lands in the reserve. The condition was that it would preserve good grass and grow at least 10 acres of sugar beet to feed the geese.
However, it had failed to honour these conditions from 2002 to 2004.