A small meat trader has been awarded €2.5 million damages by the High Court following a controversial 17-year legal battle over how the Department of Agriculture dealt with it over licences for imported beef quotas.

Mr Justice Kevin Feeney made the award yesterday to Emerald Meats.

The department has also incurred multi-million legal costs arising from its unsuccessful defence of the case.

The company had claimed that the department had conspired with beef processing companies, including the Goodman companies, from the late 1980s to flout a new EC law on beef imported under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

Emerald Meats claimed certain beef processing companies were included by the department on a list sent to the EC of traditional importers of the GATT beef, when, in fact, those companies had not imported the beef but simply sold their quotas. Emerald Meats, which had imported the beef, was excluded from the list.

The company's managing director John McCarthy made a formal statement to the Garda Síochána in early 1990 alleging a conspiracy to defraud his company of its entitlements under EU and Irish law and he later initiated civil proceedings in the High Court. In 1991, the High Court ruled substantially in favour of Emerald Meats and awarded some £463,000 in special damages to the company. The court ordered the department to recover half of those costs from certain Goodman companies.

However, the department appealed to the Supreme Court which rejected the appeal in 1997 and directed that the matter return to the High Court for assessment of damages, to including general damages.

The case was before Mr Justice Feeney to decide the amount of damages to be awarded to the company and, in a reserved judgment yesterday, the judge made an award of €2.45 million.