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The second Galway Beef Plan AGM ended without an elected committee, as farmers walked out of the room in the Ard Rí Hotel in Tuam on Wednesday night.
Pat Coogan, a Meath dairy farmer and Beef Plan member, chaired the vote of the election.
“Eamon Corley asked me to go to chair the vote. I soon discovered I was stuck in a civil war, two factions, both wanting their own king. It was like two rams head-butting in a field.
“I was informed that the minutes were read and accepted – the crowd said no, no and the rules were waved at me.
“They informed me that they were. ‘I’m only here to chair the election’ I said. I wasn’t there last week, I was neutral.
“Some lady got up shouting and waving the rules. They wanted to drag up personal grievances.
“I thumped the table and said everything is outside, the minister, factories and all that goes with it. Why bring the civil war inside? Keep it outside, unite inside. There was clapping at this,” Coogan said.
Wrong
He told the Irish Farmers Journal that no matter what he suggested he was wrong.
“I had a pre-printed voting sheet. I called the names out to ask were they running,” he said. "Noel Kelly and Martin Heverin said they weren’t, Kevin O’Brien said he was."
“Eoin Donnelly started to dispute it, said it was illegal, unconstitutional, that he only got 24 hours’ notice. Four or five were barking at me too,” he said.
Coogan said people started arguing among themselves. “I asked for a show of hands to see how many were in favour of going ahead with it. From where I was looking, two-thirds of hands went up to say they wanted it to go ahead.
“The rowing started again, rulebooks were waving. It was going to descend into a brawl and I said there’s no point in this and just left it in mid-air. No one was prepared to compromise,” he said.
Left the room
He added that one man got up and left and then more began to follow.
“One or two from the top table were trying to clarify points. There was shouting going on left, right and centre. It came to an end and no election was held,” he said.
In his opinion, the only solution is for Eoin Donnelly and Kevin O’Brien to split the chair role.
“Have two chairs and both can be king. The way they’re going on there’ll be no Beef Plan,” he said.
“Beef Plan is split in Galway,” Galway chair Kevin O’Brien told the Irish Farmers Journal.
O’Brien said there were four nominations for the role of chair in the county on Wednesday night; Kevin O’Brien, Noel Kelly, Martin Heverin and Eoin Donnelly.
“We extended an olive branch to let him [Donnelly] run, even though he’s not a registered member,” he said.
Donnelly has told the Irish Farmers Journal that he paid his €10 membership in Kilkenny on 28 November 2018, but he subsequently also paid a membership at last week’s abandoned AGM – at the higher 2020 rate of €50.
O’Brien said that his name was called out to see if he was still running and he accepted.
“Eoin Donnelly didn’t accept or refuse,” he said. “We wanted to vote. Mine was the only vote cast in the ballot,” he said.
O’Brien said that it was never announced that the meeting was going to be called off or abandoned, that people just started to walk out.
“Everybody walked out. It’s up in the air. It’s in a mess. It’s divided at the minute. I don’t know how we can bring it back,” he said.
Fracas
Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal Galway Beef Plan PRO Jackie Flannery said that she sent an email to Beef Plan co-chairs, Eamon Corley and Hugh Doyle at 5pm on Wednesday evening telling them that she believed there was going to be a fracas at the door and that people would be turned away.
“As a result I prepared myself for anything that could happen on the night,” she said.
Flannery said that on the night she identified herself as the Galway PRO to the chair of elections, Coogan, and said “he wasn’t prepared to take proposals from the floor”.
“Someone removed registration papers from the door. There were two tables with registration papers. The committee members were in a flap [at the door], they said someone came in, grabbed the papers and ran out.
“I informed the chair that registration papers had been removed. He tried to get on with the meeting,” she said, adding that the chair said the vote was going ahead.
“I went back to the rules of governance, rule 18, section 15 and called for a poll,” she said. She said she read out the role of a poll which needs two or three people to back it and called for the meeting to be called off.
“The chair did not take this on board, I reminded him I had a proposal on the table from the floor. Cllr Declan Geraghty also made a proposal”, none of which were accepted, she said.
Farcical
Flannery questioned the methodology by which the meeting was chaired. She was of the view they were not allowed their democratic right to speak or put proposals on the table.
She questioned the independence of the chair and believed that that an independent chair should be someone from outside of Beef Plan.
She said a lot of damage has been done to Beef Plan by the rows at the meetings but there is also a lot of work to do.
“I’ve always called for the truth, transparency and fairness. I’m quite sure if we’re given a period of time we can work out the issues. At the end of the day, we’re here in the interest of Galway farmers.”
Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal on Saturday Eoin Donnelly said: “I do not recognise Eamon Corley as a co-chair of Beef Plan.” His understanding is that “the rules of governance say he needs to step down because he is a director of a producer organisation (PO), therefore he can’t hold an officer’s position with Beef Plan’s national committee.
“You can’t be a director of a PO and officer on national committee. That is why Kevin O’Brien resigned as a director of the Emerald Isle PO. You can’t be an director of a PO and a director of Beef Plan,” he said.
When asked by the Irish Farmers Journal if he should step down as a director of the PO Irish Beef Producers in order to hold such a position on the national committee, he said: “My sole intent is to be a member of the national committee, a non-executive member. I won’t hold an officer’s position. Within the committee I’d be able to help form policy.”
Donnelly is currently both vice chair and secretary on the Galway Beef Plan committee, he says that he and a number of other committee members were not involved in committee discussions to include him on the ballot paper on Wednesday night.
“If there was agreement to let me run where was this discussed?” he said, highlighting again that he was removed from the Galway Beef Plan WhatsApp pages.
“I got notification at 3.40pm on Tuesday in a text from Hugh Doyle saying that I was allowed to run [in the Galway election]. That’s just about 24 hours’ notice before an election – how do you get people mobilised to get into a room for a vote? I’m quite certain it wasn’t three weeks’ notice for an AGM [as per the rules of governance].
“People that did go, found yet again that they weren’t on the register,” he said, highlighting a number of people from east Galway who found their names weren’t on it.
“There was upwards of 60 people not on the register on the night and quite a number were turned away at the door,” he said. He believes the registers are not accurate and some people are being denied the right to vote.
“People need to make it known where they paid so there can be due diligence as to what happened to their forms and their €10,” he said.
Independent chair
Donnelly has also taken issue with the person appointed as the independent chair of the election on the night, Pat Coogan.
“Pat introduced himself to me, prior to him taking up the position [on the night]. He told me he was the independent chair, I asked him who appointed him, he said the Beef Plan committee. During the course of the meeting I asked him the same question from the floor. He was forced to say Hugh Doyle and Eamon Corley appointed him.
“I did not consider him to be an independent chair.
“When he made the assertion that two thirds of the people in the room put up their hands to go ahead with the election, he asked people to put up their hands if they wanted the meeting to go ahead or to postpone it for 21 days,” Donnelly said, adding that he challenged him on this as he was asking two questions at once.
Coogan said in response to this comment from Donnelly: “I was very specific, I was here to hold an election not a meeting.”
In response to Kevin O’Brien saying Donnelly neither accepted nor refused to contest the election, Donnelly said he said on the night: “without prejudice I will content this election tonight on the understanding that this election result is likely to be challenged at a later date. I did offer to go for the vote.”
Mediation
Donnelly told the Irish Farmers Journal that the national committee of Beef Plan intend to enter into mediation with the co-chairs Eamon Corley and Hugh Doyle.
After the mediation talks, a national EGM will take place on 26 January. “We’re going to go through the rules of governance and ask Beef Plan members to go ahead with what’s already in the rules or to make amendments before the rules are ratified,” he said.
“What’s going on around the country is a disgrace, when you’ve to have security and Gardaí at meetings,” he said.
No date has been set for the Galway AGM to reconvene for a third time.
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