A detailed account of illegal sheep trading from Britain was revealed yesterday in a tiny Co Carlow courtroom where a local farmer unsuccessfully appealed an order to slaughter sheep he had imported from Britain.
Mr James Kavanagh, of Raheenleigh, Myshall, sought to prevent the Department of Agriculture slaughtering more than 500 sheep he had imported without health documentation into Ireland prior to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
Although his application failed, and took a full day to hear before Judge Donnchadh O Buachalla at Bagenalstown, many details of the trade came out for the first time in public.
Mr Kavanagh heard from a neighbour that sheep could be purchased cheaply in Scotland and England. He was given a number of a haulier in October last and spoke to a man called Errington in Cumbria.
In a sworn statement he gave to Det Sgt Gerry McGrath, Mr Kavanagh said he had ordered a load of sheep at £22 a head. In all, he paid £9,417 for sheep to the man.
Some of the sheep had tags and some did not. He got no documentation with them.
He had more dealings with the Cumbrian dealer later in the year but he had to pay for the delivery of the sheep from the North to the Kildare Chilling Plant, where he had them picked up. His statement told how he had sold some of the British animals and had kept some of them on about eight parcels of land he owned or rented in Carlow, Laois and Wicklow.
He arranged for a third load of sheep, which arrived in late January, and in February he got a call from a dealer that there would be no outlet for sheep because of the foot-and-mouth crisis and to sell his animals.
He said he brought a load of sheep to Kildare Chilling, including 50 native ewes, but sold them in the name of another man to avoid paying tax. The other man received a cheque for £8,940.
In direct evidence, Mr Kavanagh - who claimed that half the 541 animals which the Department wanted to slaughter were owned by his sister Shelia - said it had taken him two hours to remove the British tags from the animals before he presented them for sale.
The authorities caught up with Mr Kavanagh when they were tracing animals in the area and became concerned when he told them the third and final load had been delivered in early January.
However, that proved not to be the case. It was January 19th before they arrived here and it was late February, well after the first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain, before the sheep were paid for. The sheep were tested and found free of foot-and-mouth.
In early March attempts were made to round up the sheep but the weather was very bad and many of the sheep were on the side of Mount Leinster.
Eventually, in early March, nearly 550 sheep, some with British tags or holes in their ears and others identified to Department vets as British sheep by Mr Kavanagh, were placed in a field at his home and the local superintendent veterinary inspector from Carlow ordered their slaughter.
Mr Kavanagh had asked if there would be any compensation for the animals, the court heard, and the inspector, Mr James Walsh, told him there would not. Mr Kavanagh then began an immediate legal challenge to the order.
Yesterday, his sister gave evidence that she owned half the sheep which were the subject of the slaughter order as she had a herd number for land she had rented in Glendalough.
Mr Walsh told Judge O Buachalla he had not identified the sheep to the officials as being British but he might have told them that he thought they were British. He denied that he had not mentioned his sister's flock.
Asked where the remaining British sheep might be now, Mr Kavanagh said he did not sell them and they could be up on Mount Leinster. "They could be all over the country, the county," he added.
That, said Mr Eanna Molloy for the State, would have serious implications for the fight to keep foot-and-mouth out of the country and for all the sheep in the area.
The sheep, Department officials said, will be slaughtered later today.