{"id":164004,"date":"2025-06-06T21:52:19","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T21:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/164004\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T21:52:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T21:52:19","slug":"two-men-jailed-over-industrial-scale-illegal-dumping-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/164004\/","title":{"rendered":"Two men jailed over \u2018industrial scale\u2019 illegal dumping \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two men have been jailed at Derry Crown Court for their part in what a judge described as \u201ca systemic pattern of established behaviour to facilitate industrial level environmental crime\u201d in relation to illegal dumping.<\/p>\n

Paul Doherty (66) of Culmore Road and G\u00e9rard Farmer (58) of Westlake both in Derry had pleaded guilty to a series of waste management offences on the Mobuoy Road that occurred on dates between January 1 2011 and July 4 2013 in Doherty\u2019s case and July 1 2007 and August 5 2013 in Farmer\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

The court was told that while the exact tonnage of waste was disputed it ran to hundreds of thousands of tonnes and the value would be somewhere around \u00a330 million in \u2018relevant landfill charges and taxes\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"EnviromentalEnviromental campaigners outside Derry Court on Friday after Paul Doherty and Gerry Farmer were sentenced in connection to the illegal dumping at Mobuoy on the outskirts of Derry. Picture Margaret McLaughlin 6-6-2025 (MARGARET MCLAUGHLIN PHOTOGRAPHY ) <\/p>\n

It was said that much of the illegal dumping took place on land owned by Farmer and on adjacent land owned by Doherty.<\/p>\n

\"UVF<\/a>\"Queen’s<\/a><\/p>\n

Judge Neil Rafferty KC said Doherty received \u2018financial reward largely in the form of cash payments. ‘<\/p>\n

The bulk of the waste was household waste which the court heard is \u2018highly polluting\u2019.<\/p>\n

The judge said that the remedial costs to put right the dumping were also disputed \u2018it is quite clear that significant public expenditure has been incurred and will continue to be incurred.\u2019<\/p>\n

Judge Rafferty said that emails showed that Farmer had \u2018full knowledge of what he was doing and was actively engaged in covering up the criminality at the site.\u2019<\/p>\n

The court heard that the emails also \u2018leave little doubt about the nature of the financial arrangement\u2019 involving Doherty.<\/p>\n

The judge said that while there was dispute over the exact tonnage \u2018it is clear that the quantity of waste across both sites is very significant\u2019.<\/p>\n

A report on Doherty said he was \u2018remorseful ‘ and denied any financial gain but Judge Rafferty rejected this.<\/p>\n

The report on Farmer noted he believed he should have paid more attention to what was going on but again the judge said the emails contradicted that.<\/p>\n

\"PaulPaul Doherty and Gerry Farmer are taken from Derry Crown Court on Friday after they were sentenced in connection to the illegal dumping at Mobuoy on the outskirts of Derry. Picture Margaret McLaughlin 6-6-2025 (MARGARET MCLAUGHLIN PHOTOGRAPHY ) <\/p>\n

The court heard that to date monitoring and remedial measures costing \u00a36.5 million had already been undertaken but this figure would increase.<\/p>\n

Passing sentence Judge Rafferty said this was \u2018a purely economically motivated environmental crime on an industrial scale\u2019 and he sentenced Doherty to 12 months immediate custody and Farmer to 21 months.<\/p>\n

The judge concluded: \u201cThe time has long since passed where those who commit environmental crime motivated by greed can expect to walk free from the consequences of their actions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men have been jailed at Derry Crown Court for their part in what a judge described as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-164004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114638641271234314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}