The High Court has struck out proceedings brought by Noel Long against Bord Bía and three other public bodies, finding that he lacked standing to challenge Ireland’s food accreditation system and that the claim was bound to fail as brought.
In a judgment delivered on 20 March 2015, Ms Justice Baker said Long had not established that his complaints were justiciable by him. The proceedings were struck out on the grounds that they were bound to fail and that Long had no standing to maintain them as then constituted.
Long, a horticulture and food science professional who acted through QMS Solutions, had challenged the way the accreditation and standards system operated. He argued that the system was market-led rather than producer-led and alleged that the bodies’ structures and decisions failed to meet producers’ needs and statutory and EU requirements.
The case followed QMS Solutions’ unsuccessful bid for a Bord Bía contract to develop an online portal for the Origin Green sustainability programme. Long later complained about the tender process, but told the court he was not seeking to reverse the decision not to award the contract. The judge therefore treated the action as a broader challenge to the bodies’ performance of their statutory and EU obligations, and did not decide whether the proceedings were a collateral attack on the tender decision.
The defendants argued that Long could not bring a case on behalf of QMS Solutions or other people associated with it. The judge accepted, for the application, that QMS Solutions was a trading name, but said Long had not shown that he acted with the authority of others connected with the business. She held that the central standing issue went further: Long was not a food producer, supplier or manufacturer seeking accreditation. His business assisted those who might apply, and any claim about whether the system served producers would belong to those producers, the judgment said.
The judge also found that Long had not identified a specific decision by an accreditation body or an Act of the Oireachtas that he challenged. His case instead advanced general complaints about the system and its effect on producers. The court said a citizen bringing such a claim had to show a directly affected interest.
The judgment records that Long accepted some language in his emails was unnecessarily inflammatory. The court’s decision was made at the strike-out stage, before oral evidence or full submissions on the claim. It did not determine the underlying allegations about the accreditation system or the tender process.