Paragraph 5 of the terms and conditions of the January-February 1993 special beef premium scheme, which accompanied every application form issued to farmers, made it very clear that applicants who were not the subject of an on-farm inspection should forward their cattle identity cards to the local office of my Department for scrutiny, punching and stamping before selling any cattle which had been submitted for premium.
The person named sold the cattle he had applied on through a mart some seven months after application but did not forward the cards for punching to Galway local office as required. One purpose of the requirement is to ensure that any purchaser would be fully aware of the premium status of the animals he buys. In this case another farmer could have bought the cattle involved with unpunched ears and clean, unpunched cattle identity cards and could have presented them for premium in good faith in a later application period. I believe that any such purchaser would be entitled to feel aggrieved if refused payment on the animals in question because payment had been made to the first applicant. It is, therefore, not possible to make payment to the person named.
