The election of a former Green Party member as chairman of one of Co Limerick's largest branches of the IFA in Rathkeale has been declared void by the organisation.
Pat Culhane's election was declared void under Irish Farmers' Association rules because he stood as a Green Party candidate in local government elections two years ago.
"We are a non-political organisation and have what is known as the three-year rule," an IFA spokesman said yesterday. "Under that no one can be elected to an IFA position if they have stood in an election for any party in the previous three years."
He denied an allegation made to a local newspaper by Mr Culhane that the IFA wanted to get rid of him because he disagreed publicly with its stand on the Askeaton-Ballysteen animal deaths controversy some years ago.
Mr Culhane, who failed in his attempt to make the local county council, said he was no longer a member of the Green Party but was democratically elected chairman of the 100-strong branch and still considered himself chairman.
He said the three-year rule did not seem to apply to another county branch, Ballyahill, where former Fianna Fáil councillor John Cregan, who was also unsuccessful in the last local government elections in 2004, had not been asked to stand down from the post of chairman by IFA.
"That did not seem to bother IFA at all," Mr Culhane said last week. He would be looking at the election of Mr Cregan in the context of what had happened to him. "The same rule should apply to everyone in the organisation," he said.
Mr Cregan told the Limerick Leader he had not heard anything about being asked to stand down from IFA. "If I have to I will," he said. "I was asked to go for this position. There are only a handful of us in Ballyahill IFA."
An attempt to replace Mr Culhane has proved difficult for IFA in the county as only a small number of the 100 members in the branch turned up to a special meeting, called to sort out the problem and no one would take the chair for that meeting.
Headquarters in Dublin is expected to ask the secretary of the Askeaton branch to call another meeting to elect a new chairman.