The Minister’s interference in the court process of a case is extremely serious, and hiding behind an empty press release, from his own officials, is feeble and cowardly, according to Deputy Mattie Mc Grath.
The Leader of the Rural Independent Group, Deputy Mattie Mc Grath, stated:
“A bizarre high court challenge by the Minister, aimed at quashing the convictions of a senior department official who allegedly inflicted the ‘greatest form of cruelty’ on his cattle, is setting a dangerous precedent. The Minister must clarify his actions.”
“The intervention by this Minister is rather puzzling and frankly unethical. This is especially true, when one considers that the official concerned was also responsible for enforcing animal welfare regulations for the Minister.”
“The animal neglect and welfare convictions, given by Sligo District Court in June, were on foot of the Minister’s prosecution.”
“In fact, in the original case, Judge Kilrane criticised the department’s management of the entire case and questioned how the official concerned was still in their position within the department. The judge also accused the department of being too lenient against the senior official, in relation to its internal handling of the case.”
“It is now completely unbelievable that the Minister would do an about face to have the sentence set aside or quashed, particularly for a senior official in the department who is meant to be overseeing the very matters for which he has pleaded guilty.”
“In all other cases of individuals feeling wronged by the courts, the freedom to appeal to the higher court, in this case – the circuit court, is present.”
“However, it appears the Minister’s unprecedented intervention of judicially reviewing a case, involving his own senior official, means the department official will not have to lodge such an appeal.”
“Last week, while the Minister remained silent on this issue, his officials issued a statement, painting the picture that the Minister was somehow obliged to take this action to ‘protect the integrity of the overall conviction’.”
“If this was, in fact, the case, then we would see many other Ministers taking legal proceedings against court rulings on a continued basis. Yet, we know that that is not the case. Furthermore, what sets this case apart is that one of the Minister’s own employees was the convicted party.”
So far, the Minister’s silence regarding his actions is totally unacceptable. Therefore, we are calling on Minister Charlie Mc McConalogue to come clean and make a public statement on the rationale and full intent of his high court challenge.”
“After all, the taxpayers will foot the bill for the Minister’s intervention. As such, this episode should be fully transparent, and vital animal welfare must not be undermined by the Minister’s actions here,” concluded Deputy Mc Grath.
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