Beef dispute ends after 14 years

A legal dispute that prompted the collapse of Charlie Haughey's Government and helped start a trend of hugely expensive tribunals of inquiry ended today – after more than 14 years.

The row involved actions and counter-actions between the Government and Larry Goodman, the head of Ireland’s biggest beef empire.

The state moved against the company in 1989, when the then Industry and Commerce Minister Des O’Malley cancelled export credit insurance on the company’s sale of beef to Iraq.

That led to a claim for about €100m, plus costs and damages, against the state by Mr Goodman, and a responding move by the Government.

The affair indirectly led to the eventual collapse of the government of then Taoiseach Charlie Haughey, whose Fianna Fáil party was in coalition power with Mr O’Malley’s Progressive Democrats.

The end of that administration came after increasingly bitter clashes at hearings of the tribunal into the beef industry between Mr O’Malley and then-Finance Minister Albert Reynolds, who later went on to become Taoiseach when Mr Haughey quit over an unrelated scandal.

The tribunal cost millions of pounds in legal fees and other expenses.

A number of other similar inquiries into other issues have been staged since then.

Today both Mr Goodman and the Government withdrew their actions and agreed to bear their own legal costs.

The move was welcomed by Tánaiste Mary Harney, who succeeded Mr O’Malley as head of the Progressive Democrats.

She expressed satisfaction at the outcome, but made no further comment.

A statement from Goodman Holdings’ parent company, Anglo-Irish Beef Processors, said the agreement with the State “means that enormously costly and time-consuming hearings into events that occurred up to fourteen years ago can be avoided.

“The settlement enables the management of Irish Food Processors Limited to focus their time and resources on their current and future business“.

Mr O’Malley said there had been “a very satisfactory outcome indeed” to the affair.

And, asked whether he felt vindicated, replied: “The facts speak for themselves. I am glad I took the decision I did.”