A FARMER who admitted cruelty to donkeys and horses has been ordered to pay €1,800 costs and take instruction on running his farm by Sligo District Court.
James Curley, who admitted starving the animals to a point where they gnawed fence posts and tree bark to try to survive spent three days on remand in custody on Judge Kevin Kilrane’s orders to “reflect” on what he did.
The judge was yesterday shown a letter Curley received before the hearing after widespread publicity about the case earlier in the week. Judge Kilrane described the letter, which was not read in court, as “nasty literature” and said the person who wrote it couldn’t be an animal lover “with that kind of evil content”.
Insp Donal Sweeney, prosecuting, was told Curley was lodging an official complaint about the letter and he said it would be investigated.
The judge told Curley he would have to live with the “public scandal and odium” of his cruelty.
The court heard from defence solicitor Mark Mullaney that Curley had a great love of donkeys and horses which he bred, but following an accident in 2007 he suffered illness and he now accepted that the cruelty the animals suffered was “regrettable and reprehensible”.
Judge Kilrane ordered Curley to pay the €1,800 prosecution costs and take instructions on the running of his farm from the authorities. If they ordered him to sell animals he must obey.
The judge adjourned the case until September 22nd and said he would “finalise” sentence then.
Curley, a father of three from Easkey, Co Sligo, admitted cruelty to donkeys and horses on rented land in the Culleens area of west Sligo in February 2010.
He told the court yesterday: “I’m very sorry for what happened. It will never happen again. I was sick and in bad form.”
An inspector from the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and a vet who visited the 40-acre property found a dead donkey at the gateway.
In the field they found a number of animals at various stages of emaciation, with protruding bones, muscle wastage, overgrown hoofs, hair loss and suffering from hypothermia.
The court also heard of chewed bark from the perimeter hedgerows as well as fence posts that had been eaten down.
Curley, who pleaded guilty to three cruelty charges and a charge of failing to dispose of an animal carcass, claimed he was sick at the time, as a result of the accident three years previously.
But the farmer, who is in his early 60s, insisted at the earlier hearing that the animals were being fed hay and even “a biteen of grain” daily.