I only read this today, although it’s a few months old (May 2022).[https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/judge-upholds-6-000-fine-for-destruction-of-hedgerows-mature-trees-1.4875942](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/judge-upholds-6-000-fine-for-destruction-of-hedgerows-mature-trees-1.4875942)
Main points for me (among others)
* A €6,000 fine for “horrendous” destruction of hedgerows and mature woodlands imposed on a landowner has been upheld at Carlow Circuit Criminal Court.
* At a hearing in Carlow District Court in September 2021, O’Reilly pleaded guilty to the five offences. Judge Geraldine Cathy imposed a fine of €3,000 for destruction of birds’ nests and their eggs and €3,000 for damaging vegetation during the bird-nesting season.
* At a time when the State had declared a biodiversity crisis.
* NPWS district conservation officer Kieran Buckley said the sheer scale of the damage to the hedgerows and mature hardwood trees was effectively the death of a local farmland ecosystem.
* Mr Buckley told the court that by tearing out hedgerow vegetation and the trees, O’Reilly increased the size of areas farmed to claim additional subsidy payments. Judge Griffin described this as a reward for criminality.
* The conservation officer said the average age of the mature trees was 100 years, which along with hedgerow vegetation would have sequestered significant amounts of carbon prior to their destruction. He believed it would take a half-century for this ecosystem to recover.
* The judge described the photographic evidence of destroyed vegetation as “horrendous”, adding that it was an act of grave criminality which could have warranted a fine of €25,000 in the District Court under the Wildlife Act.
The fact that he appealed €6,000 fine, and the judge stuck with that says he got away with it. He should have been forced to replant the hedgerows and the same types of trees if he couldn’t replant the original, and his fine should have at least been doubled. So does he get his ‘extra farm subsidies’ now? Sickening amount of it going on and them getting away with it.
3 comments
It’s one bad egg. The old CAP incentivised this by getting higher payments for land.
The new CAP will incentivise farmers to keep and grow their hedgerows now for the first time.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/farming/arid-41002058.html
1200*11 =13200m^2 or 1.32 hectares or 3.26 acres. His fine doesn’t even equal the land value or farming land added. Profit all the way.
Evacuator operators are all to willing to do this type of work, they to should bare some responsibility for this kind of destruction because they profited too
We need an offenders register for something like this and if you’re on it you don’t get any grants or subsidies. That’d be a proactive measure to stop this happening in the first place.