Four ponies held at Belfast port for a month owing to Brexit paperwork concerns are to be freed after a court ruling. In the first case of its kind since the UK left the EU, a judge on Thursday ordered the release of four Dartmoor ponies that had been detained since 21 March after arriving in Belfast on a ferry from Liverpool. They had been bought by Ashleigh Massey, from County Down, as a gift for her daughter but were held because of apparent discrepancies in the Brexit paperwork. Lawyers for Massey claimed some of the concerns centred on the wrong lettering in one section or fields completed in black ink instead of red. According to Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environmental and Rural Affairs, there were serious omissions about the ponies’ place of origin, required for welfare and tracing purposes. Under the rules, the ponies could have been sent back to Britain for a further 30 days’ quarantine. Handing down his decision after an appeal by Massey to get access to the ponies, the judge George Conner concluded there was “no virtue in sending the animals back to Scotland or any other place on the mainland just to teach someone a lesson in form-filling”. He urged Brussels to review the case and the rule that the animals should have been returned to Britain for a further quarantine, rather than remain in Northern Ireland. “Requiring the movement of the animals to some port on the mainland is inappropriate and cannot be said to be in the interest of the animals,” he said. “If I’m wrong in this it should be looked at by Europe, and some scope allowed for the application of common sense.” The case will be seized upon by critics of the new Brexit arrangements, including the Democratic Unionist party and loyalist communities involved in recent violence, as an argument for getting rid of the protocol they see as absurd.
Outside court, Massey’s solicitor, Patrick Higgins, called on Stormont, Westminster and Brussels to address issues he claimed the Northern Ireland public were now encountering on a daily basis. “No matter what way people voted in the Brexit referendum, no one in Northern Ireland voted for this new additional level of bureaucracy being placed upon animal owners, hauliers and vets as a result of the Northern Ireland protocol,” Higgins said. “This additional bureaucracy is affecting the economy of Northern Ireland.” Northern Ireland has been observing strict EU rules on the transfer of food, medicines, parcels, plants and live animals since 1 January as part of the EU-UK deal to avoid the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland. This week Boris Johnson described the checks as “protuberances and barriers” and “barnacles” that he was trying to “sandpaper” off the Brexit deal. Critics say the checks are a direct consequence of the hard Brexit the PM signed. Shanker Singham, a government adviser and trade expert, told the House of Commons Northern Ireland affairs select committee on Wednesday that one way to dramatically reduce the checks was for the UK to ask the EU to agree a veterinary arrangement similar to that operating between Australia and New Zealand. Singham said this would not get rid of checks altogether but would “lower the intensity” of the checks. The court heard that in this case the documentation had been completed by an experienced vet in Wales, Phillipa Hughes, who already had experience of dealing with post-Brexit paperwork in Europe. Giving evidence remotely, Hughes accepted mistakes were made on the forms and told the court she was prepared to travel to amend them, but she insisted the horses were completely healthy and disease-free. According to a report from the court, Massey’s barrister, Sean Mullan, said the department had acted irrationally and disproportionately. “These are not animals coming in from the far east or Russia,” he argued. “This is not some rogue vet trying to flood the market with rogue animals. She is an experienced professional, and she has expressed her distress about them being in this predicament.”