Imported sheep at height of foot and mouth crisis

THE man who ran the Carlow puppy farm has three previous criminal convictions dating back over a decade, the Circuit Court heard.

At the height of the foot and mouth crisis in 2001, Kavanagh, of Raheenleigh, Myshall, Co. Carlow, exposed the Irish agriculture sector to serious risk when he smuggled sheep into Ireland. He was convicted of importing 541 sheep from England, which was then in the grip of an outbreak, without health certificates and relevant documentation.

He was also convicted of falsifying records when he fed the sheep into a processing plant under another’s man’s name, to evade tax.

He paid the man £8,940 as part of the scam to defraud VAT and defraud the Department of Agriculture.

The prosecutor said his actions would have ‘serious implications’ for the fight to keep foot and mouth out of the country. In 2007, he was convicted of drink driving. This week, Judge James McCourt, who presided over what he described as a ‘most extraordinary case’, also heard details of probation reports submitted for both defendants, Kavanagh and his wife Jennifer.

The report for James Kavanagh noted that the author couldn’t say that he wouldn’t reoffend.

In passing a three-year jail term on James Kavanagh in Carlow Circuit Court, Judge James McCourt said: ‘Words fail me’.

Jennifer Kavanagh had no previous convictions.