'Living nightmare' - Hope for justice as minister orders review of Kilkenny farm enquiry

Twenty years after ‘severe’ issues with animal health emerged on a North Kilkenny farm, the Minister for Agriculture has ordered an independent review of his department’s original investigation.

The decision has been hailed as a positive step that supporters hope will bring justice and closure to the family affected by a ‘living nightmare’.

In the late 1990s cattle on Dan Brennan’s farm, outside Castlecomer, began to fall ill. He blamed outside environmental factors, however a Department of Agriculture report put the blame on farm management.

Since then, Mr Brennan has had the support of farming organisations as he sought to get to the bottom of the mystery. This has culminated in a report from the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, calling for an independent investigation.

That report came before the Dáil last Thursday when Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue, finally agreed to an independent review into that original investigation.

“In acknowledgement of the work the committee has done and the questions it is raising it is appropriate that I have a separate independent review of the Department’s investigation and any information that fed into it, to examine this further, provide feedback and look at what has been done,” the minister told the Dáil chamber.

Deputy Jackie Cahill, Chair of the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee, said: “There are a lot of unanswered questions. One thing is certain, which is that Dan Brennan has suffered huge mental anguish and financial hardship from what happened on his farm.”Deputy Cahill said a number of events ‘proved conclusively’ that a new investigation is needed - including letters from three vets saying there was no infection, that the matter was outside Mr Brennan’s control and that extensive testing, analysis and feed trials had not identified a cause of the problem.

An investigation by the Department, the EPA, Teagasc, the health board and county council, was initiated around 2005, but the issues continued.

Deputy Cahill quoted a vet who described how Mr Brennan’s “cattle had bones growing in their soft tissues and their vertebrae could be cut with a knife.”

A UCD veterinary college epidemiology report said that it was not disease, while Teagasc wrote to the EPA “to say there was something seriously wrong on Mr Brennan’s farm. The EPA stated that the management of the farm was not the problem and that it was down to something it had never seen before,” Deputy Cahill told the Dáil.
The matter was taken to EU level but did not progress.

Investigations included one by a UCD professor who found indications of fluoride pollution in the local flora, while a Teagasc Moorepark investigation found traces of cadmium in cattle blood.

Deputy Cahill said all Mr Brennan wants “is answers to the questions he is asking and justification that the losses incurred on his farm and what was happening to his cattle were outside of his control and had nothing to do with his and his family’s farming practices.”

To show how seriously this issue is being taken by the agricultural community, the president of the IFA, Francie Gorman, and president of the ICMSA, Denis Drennan, were in the Dáil Visitors Gallery to show solidarity with Mr Brennan. He was also joined by friends and neighbours, and Cllr Pat Fitzpatrick.

Mr Gorman said review terms of reference will be ‘crucial’. Mr Drennan said that it was important that farmers – and all citizens – had trust in the ability and willingness of government agencies to investigate serious matters and deliver clear explanations.