A man from Beara was prosecuted for causing damage to his neighbour’s property. Jeremiah Crowley (45) of Leahill, Adrigole, Beara, appeared before Bantry District Court on four charges.
On one of the charges, he was given the benefit of the Probation Act. Two more were taken into consideration, but on the fourth the case was adjourned to the December 14th sitting for the payment of a €1,000 fine.
Sgt Trish O’Sullivan said Brian Hanrahan, the accused’s neighbour, noticed that damage was being caused to some of his property, and that some items had been taken from his post box. ‘He set up CCTV and a couple of incidents were detected,’ said the sergeant, who confirmed that on one occasion Jeremiah Crowley could be seen cutting the hydraulic hose of an excavator.
On another occasion, she said he could be seen putting a stick into a valve, which let the air out of the tyres of a dumper.
The accused was interviewed by the gardaí and when he saw the CCTV footage he admitted the offences, said Sgt O’Sullivan. In mitigation, solicitor Flor Murphy said his client, who works for a builder’s suppliers and is a part-time farmer, has no previous convictions. He pointed out that the two men are adjoining landowners, but Mr Hanrahan doesn’t live in the area.
Mr Murphy said Brian Hanrahan was trying to improve his land and boundary fencing but his client had been called, on many occasions, to retrieve his wandering cattle. After a time, the solicitor said things got a bit tense. He said his client felt he was not being thanked.
The solicitor said the row about fencing came to a head when one of Jeremiah Crowley’s animals got caught in a trench that had not been closed on his neighbour’s land. There was a subsequent dispute over the value of the animal and Mr Murphy said his client decided to ‘take the price in another way’.
Jeremiah Crowley was in court to meet the charge and was ‘so ashamed’ of what he had done, he said, and now the neighbours co-exist but stay out of each other’s way.
A charge of stealing Dexter cattle cards on an unspecified date prior to February 6th 2023 was taken into consideration.
The Probation Act, with a three-year bond, was applied on the December 13th 2022 charge of causing criminal damage by letting the air out of a dumper.
On a charge of cutting the hydraulic hose of an excavator on December 16th 2022, the case was adjourned to the December 14th sitting of Bantry District Court for the payment of a €1,000 fine. On a charge of stealing personal letters from his neighbour’s post box, the charge was taken into consideration.
Judge McNulty said the accused had ‘come clean’ and was unlikely to re-offend.
