'Six dogs, four goats, two parrots, two cats, a hen and a rooster'
COMPLAINANT SAID SHE WAS LIVING BESIDE A 'MENAGERIE OF ANIMALS'
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A WIDOW has described how she is living next to a menagerie of animals that includes six dogs, four goats, two parrots, two cats, a hen and a rescued rooster. And it was the rooster that was at the root of a noise abatement case Claire Keenan took against her neighbours, Anthony and Marian O'Sullivan.
Mrs Keenan made a number of allegations about the O'Sullivans when she was giving evidence including that Mrs O'Sullivan called her 'an auld bitch' after the council's dog warden visited their home.
Mrs Keenan claimed the problems with the O'Sullivans 'started from day one' when they moved next door to her home at Tower Cross, Mornington in 2001.
She said: 'Straight away, they started putting up boards on their side of the fence. Things came to a head in 2004 when I was verbally abused, accused of getting the dog warden and I didn't know what it was all about.
'I told them I didn't call the warden and I later found out it was actually a Garda who called them after other neighbours complained to him.
'There is just one thing after another and there is every annoyance. The dogs eat my fence and one time, ten dogs came into my yard for about 15 minutes.
'Mr O'Sullivan got them back through the same hole and never said any more about it. The goats don't bother me, but I don't like animals that close'.
Mrs Keenan also alleged that a few years ago, the O'Sullivans used to put two caged parrots near her fence and they screeched, but she said they don't bother her much now.
But the rooster was the main problem. She said: 'The rooster would be in their garage at night and in the morning, he would be brought around to near my window where he would crow all day long'.
Mrs Keenan's solicitor, Bernard Gogarty, said she had suggested the rooster be placed into a specially constructed run at the other side of the O'Sullivans' property but this had been rejected because it was claimed the bird would fly away.
Mrs Keenan denied claims from the O'Sullivans she had threatened she would put the dogs onto the road, or that she had instructed a workman to cut down trees on their property.
She also denied she had called the O'Sullivans 'itinerants' or suggested their property was like an 'itinerant camp'.
