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"We're going to make sure this mart is not sold as a going concern unless farmers get paid," said Monaghan IFA chair Frank Brady, who chaired the meeting where more creditors made themselves known. This one of key actions to be taken by a committee of five farmer creditors, Brady and IFA regional chair Nigel Renaghan formed on the night.
This is in line with the hopes of Connell Nugent, director of Edward Paul Nugent Ltd, the company in liquidation that was running sales at the mart. Well-known Monaghan IFA member John Boylan said he had received a call from Nugent, who is in hospital, to tell the meeting that "his ambitions is that farmers get paid".
"He will work with a liquidator and a buyer," Boylan said, offering to act as liaison between the farmers and Nugent.
Brady said that the IFA would work with the owner, the liquidator and the industry to help find a new operator to take over the mart.
"I don't know whether that can happen," he cautioned.
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Following a meeting with liquidator Cormac Mohan in Dublin earlier in the day, Brady updated farmers on the financial details know so far. Edward Paul Nugent Ltd owes €1.2m to various creditors, including €160,000 to around 80 farmers. A show of hand in the room showed that the majority of farmers owed money for livestock had not yet received creditor's claim forms from the liquidator and those figures are now likely to increase.
The liquidator's firm told the Irish Farmers Journal that they were still going through the books to establish a full report on the situation.
Brady said clients of the property auctioneering business had larger claims than sellers of livestock. Some are understood to be farmers, too.
However other creditors, such as employees and the county council, will get priority payments.
It also emerged that the company in liquidation does not own the mart's premises and owns only small items such as machinery, reducing the prospect or raising funds from selling its assets.
Licence lost
Most of the farmers' frustration was directed at the authorities. While the company's auctioneering licence ended in February 2017, this was only visible on a long list of licencees on the Property Services Regulatory Authority's website and farmers were not aware that the mart no longer offered all the guarantees required to trade securely.
"The Department can stop you for a dirty trailer but a mart could operate without a licence," said local farmer PJ McKenna, who is owed €1,280 for a horse sold in the last sale before the mart's closure.
The public was deliberately deceived
"I believe that the public was deliberately deceived," said local solicitor Paul McCormack, who offered to look into any legal implications with the committee of creditors.
McCormack and the committee will also list transactions where neither the buyer nor the seller of animals had transferred money through the mart before the company went into liquidation, to see if they could be cancelled.
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