A former Department of Agriculture official said he believes an intervention by Heather Humphreys, Fine Gael’s presidential candidate, prompted the collapse of a criminal investigation into a farmer repeatedly accused of animal cruelty.
Kieran Devlin, a retired veterinary inspector who has never previously spoken publicly on the case, said he was left “totally aghast” by the decision to drop the case against Brian Wright, a Co Monaghan farmer, after Humphreys, then minister for business, had a staff member deliver a letter to Brendan Gleeson, the department’s secretary-general.
“The charges were withdrawn literally a few days before I was due in court with him. The decision to drop the case came completely out of the blue. I think the only conclusion I can come to was that it was a direct result of some interference,” Devlin told The Sunday Times.
Wright was twice in front of the courts on animal cruelty charges before the 2020 case, which was abandoned after Humphreys had a staff member deliver a letter on behalf of an unnamed associate of the farmer. Judge Sean McBride described the evidence of Wright’s treatment of animals presented at the 2008 court date as “shocking” and “stomach-churning”.
Devlin, who described Wright as a farmer with “no compassion whatsoever” for animals, made a protected disclosure about the affair after Humphreys’s involvement was disclosed by The Sunday Times in February 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic was about to engulf the country.
“I couldn’t...
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