The Court of Appeal has dismissed Noel Long’s appeal against a High Court order striking out his proceedings against Bord Bia and four other public bodies over Ireland’s accreditation and standards system.
In a judgment delivered on 8 November 2016, Mr Justice Michael Peart said the appeal against the 25 March 2015 order had to fail. The High Court had struck out the case under Order 19, rule 28 of the Rules of the Superior Courts, finding that Long lacked standing and that the proceedings were bound to fail.
Long, who trades as QMS Solutions, provides training and assistance to producers seeking accreditation. His case alleged that the system operated by the defendants breached statutory and EU obligations, was affected by conflicts of interest and favoured markets over producers. He said the resulting arrangements caused him losses, costs and lost profit. These were allegations in his pleadings; the appeal judgment did not make findings that the alleged breaches or losses had occurred.
The dispute followed QMS Solutions’ unsuccessful 2014 tender for Bord Bia information technology services connected with the Origin Green Platform. The Court of Appeal noted that Long expressly said his proceedings were not a challenge to the decision not to award that tender.
Long argued that he had standing as an economic operator and as an “authorised representative” under EU Regulation 765/2008. The court rejected that argument. It said the wording in QMS’s service agreement describing the firm as an authorised representative did not establish that status under the regulation. In the court’s view, the regulatory definition concerned a representative acting under a manufacturer’s written mandate in relation to that manufacturer’s legal obligations.
The judgment also said the regulation placed responsibility for monitoring national accreditation bodies on the member state. It found nothing in the regulation giving a consultant who assists clients with accreditation applications standing to challenge how the national accreditation body performs that role. The court agreed with the High Court that, if the complaint was that producers were not properly considered, a producer was the person who could bring such a claim.
The Court of Appeal also upheld the conclusion that the case, framed as a general challenge to how the accreditation system operated, was bound to fail. It dismissed the appeal, leaving the High Court’s strike-out order in place.