A District Court judge said yesterday that a Co Leitrim woman, who was the respondent in proceedings taken against her by Leitrim County Council, was being used as a pawn.
Before ordering Mrs Beatrice Greene, of Trean, Mohill, to take action to abate a public health threat by exhuming and reburying dead cattle, Judge Bernard Brennan explained why, before Christmas, he had imposed a nominal fine on Mrs Greene.
He said at yesterday's sitting of Roosky District Court that, since he had imposed a fine of £10 each on some sample charges of cruelty to animals, several comments had been made to him, implying that he had been too lenient.
"When I fined this woman £10 on each count, I took serious cognisance of the fact that she was a pawn in all of this and that she was, and is, in serious bad health," he said.
Mrs Greene, in whose name a herd of 365 cattle had been transferred by her husband in January 1997, was once again a respondent yesterday as Leitrim County Council brought a complaint against her under the Public Health Act of 1878.
Witnesses, including representatives of Leitrim County Council's sanitary services department, the region's chief agricultural inspector and a garda, told the court that dead and decomposing animals had been disposed of in a manner which created a public health hazard.
Mr Martin Byrne, of the county council's sanitary services, told the court that when he inspected the farm at Cloncolry, Mohill, the carcases of between 15 and 20 animals, which had been found during a previous inspection, had been buried.
However, Mr Byrne said that the manner of burial had consisted of the carcases being bulldozed into a pond, which was then filled in with soil.
"There's a source downslope of this pond which flows into a group water scheme serving quite a number of households", he said. "And there is no doubt that decomposing particles will migrate with the water into this."
Mr Byrne handed Judge Brennan photographs which he had taken yesterday morning. These showed blood seeping up from the former pond, where upwards of 15 carcases are now buried.
"It doesn't make pleasant viewing," Judge Brennan commented.
The water, blood and decomposing particles would flow with the fluctuation of the water table, Mr Byrne said.
Representing Mrs Greene and her husband, Thomas, solicitor Mr Kevin Kilraine said that the soil surrounding the pond effectively sealed any water or other material contained in it.
Leitrim County Council claims that the only way to prevent the water from the carcase burial site from seeping into the nearby household water supply is to seal it with plastic.
Mr Kilraine said that there was no way that his client could realistically undertake the exhumation, sealing and reburial of the carcases.
Mr Gerry Gannon, solicitor, representing the county council, said: "The concern of the complainant is not to penalise Mrs Greene, but to have the public health problem abated."
Following legal exchanges relating to the technical propriety of the proceedings, Judge Brennan said: "I'm just going to make an order that, in this instance, the public health nuisance be abated, period."