Irish farmer Simon O’Dwyer guilty of further cruelty
An Irish farmer, who was sentenced to 23 months in prison and banned from owning animals for life in February 2010, has been found guilty of further cruelty.
Simon O’Dwyer of Garue, Mullinvat, Co Kilkenny was found guilty of animal cruelty, permitting carcasses to remain unburied and a breach of the peace, at Kilkenny District Court on 18 May.
The offences date back to 24 April 2009.
O’Dwyer received a two-month jail sentence and was fined €3,500, with a three-week suspended prison sentence for a breach of the peace.
Sixty-one horses and 46 cattle were seized from his farms by the Department of Agriculture in December 2009.
It was one of the worst equine cruelty and neglect cases ever seen in Ireland.
The horses, many of them heavily in foal, were found without food, knee deep in mud, and some were severely emaciated.
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They were taken in by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Irish Horse Welfare.
O’Dwyer was also prosecuted in 2007 for similar offences in 2006.
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A self-confessed newshound, farmer’s daughter and journalist of many years' experience, Charlotte worked on regional papers before joining H&H in 2007. A regular rider, she visited Ireland in 2010 to investigate the fate of Irish horses through the recession, to much acclaim, and reported from the FEI General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. She left Horse & Hound in March 2013.