A livestock dealer who imported sheep infected with foot- and-mouth disease last year has been jailed for three months.
At Dublin District Court, Judge Gerard Haughton said the consequences of John Walsh's actions had "devastated" tourism and agriculture. "The entire country is well aware as to what occurred and will be paying for it for a very considerable period of time," he said.
Walsh (51), with addresses at Warwick Square, Carlisle, England and Longford House, Clareen, Co Offaly, pleaded guilty to two charges of importing 279 animals without veterinary certificates and two charges of importing without notifying the Department of Agriculture, contrary to European Union regulations. He was sentenced to three months on each charge, to run concurrently. He had already spent almost seven months in custody awaiting trial.
Det Sgt John Colgan of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation read from two statements in which Walsh described how he began buying the sheep at marts near Carlisle on February 14th last year and tried to send a herd of 215 by boat from Stranraer to Belfast using a veterinary cert issued to him the previous week for a different herd of 170.
When the shipment was stopped, he took them back, bought more sheep, hired a different lorry and driver and got a fresh certificate for 291 animals but left Britain on February 18th with 393.
About 70 animals were dropped at a field near Newry on the 19th and the rest were taken to a holding in Meigh, Co Armagh, where their identity tags were removed. It was here, the court heard, that the first foot-and-mouth outbreak on the island was confirmed nine days later.
Walsh brought 10 animals across the Border to a holding near Enfield, Co Meath, and 21 to Irish Country Meats in Navan, where he delivered them under a false name.
Two others died and 248, the bulk of the remainder, were taken early on February 20th to the Kepak factory at Athleague, Co Roscommon, where Walsh was known by a security guard who signed him in under the name of another farmer, an innocent party.
He also gave a false registration for the lorry made of mixed-up numbers from his own lorry and jeep so as not to draw attention to the Northern registration.
He got four cheques totalling £13,097.37p from Kepak in the innocent farmer's name and he took the cheques to the AIB bank in Roscommon where there was an arrangement whereby he could exchange them for a sterling draft without showing any identification if he went to a particular counter and used a special number given to him at the factory.
He said the reason for passing the sheep off as Irish was because French and Italian markets did not want British sheep. He could obtain payment from the factories for the sheep plus a VAT rebate of between 4.2 and 4.5 per cent by using the name of a "flat rate" farmer, a legitimate farmer who was not registered for VAT.
Det Sgt Colgan said factories did "not seem to be fussy" when it came to verifying names.
Mr Graham Quinn, defending, said his client had acted out of desperation after his cattle herd was wiped out by brucellosis in 1990 and he was denied compensation because his paperwork was not in order.
Judge Haughton said the experience should have made him more alert to the dangers of disease in livestock. Instead he had "disregarded all the precautions" for "one reason only, to make money" and had used "every devise possible to cover his trail".
Walsh was given leave to appeal. He is also facing proceedings by the Criminal Assets Bureau.