A hunting club has taken a High Court challenge to conditions imposed by Minister for the Environment John Gormley on its stag hunting licence.
The Ward Union Hunt Club claims the conditions amount to an effective ban on hunting and had reduced its annual St Stephen's Day hunt to a "farce".
Club chairman Oliver Russell claimed the Green Party Minister's restrictions were "purely based on his political philosophy that hunting should be prohibited".
The Minister was contriving new conditions in the licence "to give the appearance of permitting hunting whilst in reality banning it," Mr Russell said.
Yesterday, Mr Justice John Hedigan gave leave to Feichin McDonagh SC, for the club, to seek orders quashing the Minister's decision to impose conditions on the licence. The judge was also told the club is to apply for an injunction preventing the Minister from continuing to impose the condition on the licence.
In an affidavit, Mr Russell said the club has 128 members and holds regular hunts in the north Co Dublin/south Meath area, involving a stag being released and chased by hounds until it goes "to bay" and is then "safely recaptured" by means of shooting a sedative into the animal.
The club had received licences to hunt since 1976, Mr Russell said.
However, after Mr Gormley became Minister, the licence included a condition that hounds could not be released until the deer had been recaptured.
In February last year, the National Parks and Wildlife Service indicated re-issuing of the licence would be very difficult because of an incident in January 2007 when a stag involved in a hunt crossed the yard of a school in Kildalkey, Co Meath, Mr Russell said, and as a result of that incident, the club implemented a new code of practice.
On December 19th the club received a licence subject to new conditions and went ahead with a St Stephen's Day hunt but "the whole process was bizarre and a farce", Mr Russell said.