The High Court has refused to order shippers Pandoro Ltd to keep open its Rosslare-Cherbourg livestock shipping service for Irish cattle to the continent.

The European Livestock Exporters' Association expressed deep disappointment following the judgment by the High Court President, Mr Justice Costello, yesterday and said it would now consider its legal and other options.

The association's chairman, Mr John Fleury, said it was now a matter for Irish farmers to decide whether or not they wanted a live export facility to the continental market.

He said farmers were being deprived access to their markets and their rights to export live cattle. Hauliers and all those who had invested heavily at the behest of the Department of Agriculture now faced a major threat to their livelihoods.

Pandoro Ltd, part of the P & O Group, had told farmers it would wind up its live cattle export service yesterday and the exporters had sought injunctions in the High Court restraining the company from doing so.

Mr Justice Costello said Pandoro handled 90 per cent of live cattle exports from Ireland and had wound down its service to Cherbourg since 1994. Following talks with the Department of Agriculture, the Minister had written to the Irish Farmers' Association in March pointing out that a full service was going to be reintroduced. Mr Justice Costello said that, since 1964, there had been strong opposition from animal welfare interests in Britain to the live export of cattle. When it had been announced earlier this year that a full export service would be introduced on the Rosslare-Cherbourg route, animal welfare interests had objected strongly. While he would not comment on the activities of the animal welfare interests, there had been adverse publicity in May about the service. The evidence was that Pandoro's decision to pull out of the service had been motivated by the actions of the animal welfare interests.

He had been told the decision to terminate the Rosslare-Cherbourg service had been taken for commercial reasons and, while some of the plaintiffs had claimed a legitimate expectation of the service continuing, in his opinion a fair question to be tried had not been established and he could not grant the orders sought.

Mr Justice Costello told Mr Michael Collins, SC, counsel for Pandoro, it had not been established his clients had, contrary to the Treaty of Rome, abused their dominant position in the market or that their decision constituted a quantitive restriction on exports between EU states.