Courts

Builder must pay €15,000 in charitable donations for ‘entombing’ badgers on west Dublin site

Covering badger sett with tree trunks and tonnes of soil ‘most wilful, cruel act that I’ve ever witnessed in 20 years’, wildlife officer tells court

The court heard that a breeding pair of badgers had been observed at the site. Photograph: Getty Images

Barry J Whyte
Thu Mar 7 2024 - 19:30

A property developer must donate €15,000 to several animal charities after being found to have “entombed” a badger sett on a site in west Dublin.

Experts told a court that a family of badgers may have been suffocated after being covered in tree trunks and many tonnes of soil at a property near Citywest.

Con McCarthy (61), of Greenogue Business Park, Rathcoole, Co Dublin, whose firm is building warehouse units in Browns Barn, was appealing a conviction and fine of €5,000 for offences under the Wildlife Act.

In hearing the appeal at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Thursday, Judge Jonathan Dunphy varied the earlier order of the District Court, applying the Probation Act and ordering Mr McCarthy to make a donation of €15,000 to be split equally among the Irish Wildlife Trust, Wildlife Rehabilitation Ireland and Badger Watch.

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He ordered Mr McCarthy to give an undertaking that he would in future “facilitate and uphold the preservation of wildlife above his own personal and commercial interest”.

The court heard evidence on Thursday from Kieran Buckley, an officer of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), that the badger sett had been covered in “trunks of trees and many, many tonnes of clay, which basically entombed the badgers”.

Mr Buckley said that a breeding pair of badgers had been observed at the site. The adult badgers and any cubs were “probably ... suffocated if they were in there” because of the “sheer volume of clay” that was on top of them.

“I have been enforcing the law for 20 years and this the most wilful, cruel act that I’ve ever witnessed in 20 years,” Mr Buckley told the court.

Noel McCartan of McCartan and Burke Solicitors, representing Mr McCarthy, said that his client “accepts his actions resulted in the sett in question being interfered with. He acknowledges that that was wrong.

“He certainly never had the intention to suffocate any badgers or cause them to be euthanised,” he said.

“There was no evidence that badgers were suffocated,” he told the court. And he noted that badgers were later found elsewhere on the site, though he accepted that they “may not have been the same badgers”.

Mr McCarthy has since reduced the size of the development by 10,000sq m in “order to facilitate the badgers remaining on-site”, he said.

The court heard that Mr McCarthy has no previous convictions and was concerned that his dealings with investment funds and financial institutions would be affected by a conviction.

He offered to make a charitable donation of €10,000 to the Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

William Maher, prosecuting, relayed the NPWS’s concern that a person could “buy their way out of a conviction”. Its view was the publicity from a conviction was more beneficial “because it sends out a message”, he said.

In directing Mr McCarthy to make the €15,000 donation, he said that of the original fine of €5,000 “not one single cent of that fine would go in the direction of an animal”. He added that the matter of the successful conviction in the District Court was “a matter of public record regardless of what I do today”.

Commenting on the case, Green Party Minister of State for Heritage Malcolm Noonan said: “Badgers are a protected species under the Wildlife Act. The wilful disturbance or interference with the breeding or resting site of any protected mammal is a wildlife crime, and one which is taken very seriously by the State. NPWS is strengthening its overall approach to tackling wildlife crime. Where there is evidence of offences, NPWS works closely with An Garda Síochána to take action and pursue appropriate enforcement.”

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