The High Court has refused a farmer’s challenge to South Kerry Development Partnership Limited’s decision to award him €20,000 from a LEADER funding application seeking almost €200,000. Mr Justice Max Barrett declined all the reliefs sought in the judicial review, including an order quashing the funding decisions and a direction for the application to be reconsidered.
Muiris O’Donoghue, a farmer from Feighmane West, County Kerry, had developed a farm tourism project at Geokaun Mountain and the Fogher Cliffs with his wife. The judgment says the project attracted about 20,000 visitors a year. He had previously received about €71,000 in LEADER funding and estimated that he and his wife had invested about €182,000 of their own money by August 2013.
O’Donoghue applied on 8 March 2013 for just under €200,000 towards drainage and tarring works. The partnership’s Evaluation Committee recommended the application for approval, but the board retained final decision-making authority. After government funding was cut, the partnership had about €1.5 million available against roughly €4.1 million in recommended projects.
At a 4 June 2013 meeting, the board adopted prioritisation criteria, including giving less priority to projects that expanded or continued activity previously funded under the programme. It deferred O’Donoghue’s application. At its next meeting, on 25 June, the board approved €20,000 for him. The judgment says other projects were also reassessed, with some receiving less than requested.
O’Donoghue argued that the board should have followed the earlier “first recommended, first funded” practice, and challenged its authority to introduce new criteria, the fairness of applying them after applications had been submitted, and the possibility of conflicts of interest. The judge found no evidence that the criteria had been designed to favour board members’ interests and held that the board could adopt and apply rational prioritisation criteria in response to the funding shortfall. He also rejected the claim that prior practice created a legitimate expectation of full funding, concluding that the public interest in distributing limited funds fairly would prevail in any event.
The court noted that O’Donoghue had not used the partnership’s appeal process, which included an initial review and a possible appeal to a Department regional inspector. The judge considered that a factor weighing against discretionary relief, had there otherwise been grounds to grant it. The court concluded that the partnership had not breached the applicable rules, procedures or fair-procedure requirements. It declined to grant any of the requested reliefs; it did not order the application to be reconsidered.