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Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon has dismissed claims of interference by Presidential candidate hopeful Heather Humphreys in an animal cruelty case dropped five years ago.
He said the Department’s Secretary General has publicly confirmed that no representations were made in the case, which involved a Monaghan farmer.
It had previously been revealed that Ms Humphreys received a letter from a family member of the farmer and she passed the letter on to the Department of Agriculture.
Subsequently, the case was dropped.
The Sunday Times newspaper reported that former Department of Agriculture official Kieran Devlin, a retired veterinary inspector, believes that it was the intervention by Heather Humphreys that prompted the collapse of the investigation.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s This Week programme, Minister Heydon said the issue was well aired five years ago with a number of parliamentary questions and a debate at the Public Accounts Committee.
He said that the Secretary General of the department, Brendan Gleeson was “categorically on the record as saying that there was no representation in this case”.
Mr Heydon said that Ms Humphreys’ constituency office received a letter.
“It forwarded it on, there was no representation. There was no letter with it advocating for anything in it.
“We take animal welfare really seriously in the Department of Agriculture. But every case is different and we can’t talk about individual cases as to why decisions are made around them, for very obvious reasons.
“Every case is treated on its merits and there are a number of reasons why a case wouldn’t lead to prosecution, ” the Minister said.
Ms Humphreys – who is to contest the upcoming Presidential election for Fine Gael – was also asked about the case during an interview on RTÉ Radio One’s News at One programme earlier in the week.
She said the Department of Agriculture concluded that there was no political interference and she added that she abhorred animal cruelty.
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