Tipperary 'on the verge' of losing 'badly needed' animal rescue

A Tipperary animal rescue could be forced to close their doors over issues with drainage on their site and a notice served on them by Tipperary County Council.

Paws Animal Rescue, based in Mullinahone, are now facing the prospect of having to close the rescue due to being served with a section 12 notice by Tipperary County Council.

A section 12 notice is issued where a local authority fears there is potential pollution of waters.

Speaking to the Tipperary Star, Gina Hetherington, who owns and runs Paws Animal Rescue, said that she believed that the whole situation was brought about by complaints against them.

“We had the Department of Agriculture in saying they had received ‘serious complaints’, so they did all their inspections and they were alright, the only thing that they thought was that the building itself was damp and that we were using a compost pit for the dog waste.

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“Loads of other kennels and rescues use compost pits,” Gina added.

“The next thing then was we had the county council vet, and he came in and said pretty much the same thing,” she said.

The county council vet left his recommendations with the staff of Paws, but returned a few weeks later with an inspector from the council’s environment section.

Water wash off

“They had a look at the compost pit and the wash off water from the kennels,” Gina said.

Ms Hetherington said that when Paws was built back in 2006, the drains were never built properly.

“The drains under the kennels, half the time they don’t flow anywhere, because they’re level, it’s like trying to get water to flow uphill,” she said.

“There was also supposed to be an effluent tank put in, but it never was, there was a small domestic septic tank installed, so as a result the overflow from that goes onto my land,” Gina said.

“The overflow is clear water, all that's in the wash out water is very expensive disinfectant and water, because the poo is picked up before the kennels are washed out,” Ms Hetherington explained.

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In October of last year, Paws were served with a section 12 notice by Tipperary County Council, which gave them until November 30 to sort the issues on the site.

This was then extended until March 30, but Gina says that trying to get a contractor to take on the work has been an incredibly difficult task.

“We rang every single engineer in the three counties around us, we even went as far as ringing them in Cork, no engineer would touch it.

“There was one engineering company from Clonmel who came in and looked, and they put together an idea for purifying wastewater and putting it off onto the land, but the land here is flooded, all the way back to the River Anner,” she said.

Waterlogged land

Due to a blockage in the River Anner, forestry land, farming land and the land on Paws site is flooded and heavily waterlogged.

“All the water that should be flowing down the river is coming onto the land around here because the council used to unblock it but they stopped doing it in 2005 due to health and safety,” Ms Hetherington said.

Due to how wet the land is, Ms Hetherington said that the council requested that underground tanks be installed to collect the wastewater.

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Again struggling to find a contractor to do the work, Gina took to Facebook in an attempt to find someone who would take the job on.

Finally, someone agreed to take on the work, and returned to the site with an engineer to try and make a plan to get the job done.

"In limbo"

Gina now says that their contractor is chasing the engineer for their report and plans to rectify the issues, all while the deadline for the completion of works on their section 12 notice has been and gone.

The situation has left the rescue in limbo, with a GoFundMe campaign launched by Paws in an attempt to make up some of the cost of bringing the facility up to scratch.

Since setting up in Mullinahone, Paws have rehomed in the region of 5,000 dogs, with many of these being saved from going through the county council pound.

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“We’re kind of in limbo at the moment,” Gina said.

“We have the deadline of this section 12 hanging over us, and they [the council] said they will tell us to shut the animal shelter if they don’t get plans.”

Even with the deadline of the end of March to have sent plans to the council, Ms Hetherington said that the land is far too wet to even start work on at the moment.

“They said they wanted the work done by the end of June.

“But as the builder said to me, you couldn’t put a shovel in that land until July, if you dig a hole, it’s going to fill up with water,” she said.

“At the moment, Tipperary is on the verge of losing an animal rescue that’s badly needed,” Gina said.

Tipperary County Council were contactred for a comment on this matter, but said they do not comment.

In response, Tipperary County Council said that it “cannot comment on any individual cases or actions taken by this Authority.”

Anyone who wishes to donate to Paws Animal Rescue can do so here.