A north Co Dublin farmer has been acquitted at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on charges of evading excise duty on cider he made and sold at farmers' markets.
David Llewellyn, who runs the Fruit of the Vine farm on Quickpenny Road, Lusk, was found not guilty by direction of Judge Frank O'Donnell following submissions by defence counsel Tony McGillicuddy on day five of the trial.
Judge O'Donnell told the jury members that there was a conflict between two pieces of legislation governing the taxation of cider and, in light of this, he had no choice but to direct that they find Mr Llewellyn not guilty on both counts.
Mr Llewellyn had pleaded not guilty to two counts of evading excise duty on cider produced by him. He said he had received details of a regulation in the Cider Duty Act 1940 that excused farmers from paying excise on cider they produced on a non-regular basis. Mr Llewellyn said in evidence that his requests for information had been "ignored" by Revenue officials prior to a raid on his farm in 2004, when more than 8,000 bottles and 10 thousand-litre tanks believed to have contained cider were seized.
"If I knew what I was doing was illegal I wouldn't have continued to do it so openly," he told the court.
Judge O'Donnell said the original legislation said cider was liable for excise duty from the date when it was stored for sale but this was later changed to say it was taxable from the moment it was produced. He told the jury that when customs officials visited Mr Llewellyn's farm they were not aware the law had been changed.
He found there was "a dichotomy with that legislation and what Mr Llewellyn was charged with" and he couldn't leave it "to the vagaries of what you might think was the case". "It was an entirely different offence," Judge O'Donnell said. "Criminal law must be exact - there can be no vagueness."