Five animals died and were scavenged on a Mullingar farm when their 25-year-old owner’s financial pressures became too much for him.
Judge Eamon O’Brien gave Marc Finnegan of Readypenny, Dundalk, Co Louth, a six-month suspended sentence for leaving a carcass unburied on rented land at Joristown, Mullingar, last year.
Animal cruelty charges were taken into consideration at Mullingar District Court, with the judge describing photographs of the scene as horrific and appalling.
The court heard Finnegan had borrowed heavily at the height of the boom to develop his business. When clients did not pay him, he spiralled into “dire financial circumstances,” said solicitor Chynel Phelan.