Coolmore’s agronomist Tony Nugent gave evidence in the High Court on Friday detailing the extent of the work which was done on Barne Estate lands in Co Tipperary during the autumn of 2023.

On 30 August 2023 – eight days after the Magniers say a deal was struck at Mr Magnier’s Coolmore home for the 751ac Tipperary estate – Coolmore’s tillage outfit started ploughing at Barne.

Mr Nugent was giving evidence in the case taken by John Magnier and his children JP Magnier and Katherine Wachman, who allege that Richard Thomson-Moore, Barne Estate Ltd and two Jersey-registered companies broke a binding deal to sell the 751ac estate to him for €15m in August 2023 and broke an exclusivity agreement by agreeing to sell the estate to construction magnate Maurice Regan.

Mr Regan agreed to pay €22.25m for the estate, some €7.5m more than Magnier’s alleged deal at €15m.

“We had two ploughs there… we had just finished preparing ground for grass seed in Coolmore, so it was the middle of the afternoon before we arrived,” Coolmore’s tillage guru told the court.

After arriving at Barne Estate that evening ahead of the two ploughs, Nugent said he waited inside the gate for Barne Estate’s farm manager Colm O’Flaherty to be “courteous”.

Exchange

There was an exchange between Nugent and O’Flaherty about the “change that was coming” based “only on the information” that they knew.

After ploughing away until 8pm that evening, the Barne workers were told to stay off the land and they didn’t return the following morning. This was as a result of “some issue” unknown to Nugent, he told the court.

However, Coolmore tractors were back in Barne on 7 and 8 September 2023.

“There was a lot more work to be done that day. We were ploughing strong,” Nugent said.

He went on to explain how straw had been “tidied up” by this stage and a lot of the farm could be worked. The plan he said was to plough three fields of oilseed rape.

In the meantime, two had been done by the Thomson-Moores. The Coolmore outfit continued to cultivate other fields, spray the oilseed rape and roll it.

Nugent said he was “quite happy” to meet Richard Thomson-Moore, who showed up on the farm on the morning of 9 September.

“For me it was good because I felt then that he knew what we were doing. The one thing I wasn’t sure about the far side of the house - the family were still living there. He brought me across and showed me how to get in and the layout at the back,” Nugent explained.

Deal for sprays

Nugent highlighted how Thomson Moore had some glyphosate and other small bits of spray that he didn’t want because he “was no longer farming”.

“I said we’d take whatever he doesn’t need and we’d be better off using it – an easy way out for everyone – and of course we’d pay him,” he said.

However, an issue arose in relation to whom the cheque was made out to, after the pair loaded the spray and bags of slug pellets into Nugent’s jeep.

“Richard was in the yard and he met me and he said what time are you going to the gym? I said I won’t have to now by the time we’ve all the spray loaded in,” he said.

The cheque was made out to Barne Estate, as per what was on an invoice which the office in Coolmore received, but Nugent took from Thomson-Moore that the bank account had been changed “somewhere along the line”.

Nugent said he would re-issue a cheque as quickly as possible and Thomson-Moore was happy to let him leave with the sprays.

After a number of unanswered phonecalls in the following days, Nugent told the court that Thomson-Moore ultimately never ended up getting the cheque in the end.

The case continues under Mr Justice Max Barrett.