An elderly farmer has been fined €750 for cutting trees out of season.
Tim Hegarty of Farnagh Hill, Longford is the father of the man who bought land in Westmeath in the spring of last year.
Tríona Finnen, North Westmeath conservation ranger at the National Parks and Wildlife Service gave evidence of receiving a complaint about the works on May 10 last year.
When she attended the out-farm, she noticed that 200 meters of hedge had been removed and 400 metres had been grubbed back.
Two days later she met Tim Hegarty there and he told her he was tidying up the site and clearing the ditches.
However, he refused to give her the name of the person who had done the work, saying he “couldn’t afford to”.
Mr Hegarty accepted full responsibility for the incident she said, but in his defence he denied that he had done the work himself.
A lot of mature hawthorn trees had been in the grubbed hedge, some of them up to 20ft high, the court heard.
Mr Robert Marren said the previous owners had done some of the work but there was no evidence of this before the court.
He pointed out that Ms Finnen had not checked this before the summons was issued.
Judge Hughes said he wanted to get to “the thrust of the case” which he said was “not very serious”.
He said people often don’t know it’s the closed season and want to improve their lands.
He said he would be “very angry” if he discovered that Hegarty was telling lies and said he would issue a summons for his son and the previous owner to come to court to get to the bottom of the issue.
At the judge’s request Mr Marren spoke to his client who entered a plea of guilty but the judge then refused to accept a charitable donation from Hegarty, saying that he had implicated an innocent neighbour in his defence.
Mr Marren said the work had been done to remove polythene from the lands which had been badly neglected and were on the market for quite a while.
