Charity has been ‘in crisis’ for last five years

Livestock aid charity Bóthar has recorded a €1.3m deficit for 2012 and has been “in crisis” for the past five years, according to its new chief executive.

Peter Ireton, who founded the charity 22 years ago and retired as chief executive in 2011, was reinstated by the board to his former role last week. He had been company secretary following retirement.

Mr Ireton denied the action by the board had anything to do with year-on-year losses recorded by the charity. He said there was no danger of Bóthar folding.

Financial statements posted on the charity’s website show Bóthar’s deficit grew from €379,957 in Jun 2010 to €985,251 in Jun 2011 and then to €1.3m in June of last year.

Mr Ireton replaced Dave Moloney as chief executive and said Mr Moloney remains his “number two” at the charity, returning to the position he held prior to Mr Ireton’s retirement. Mr Ireton said Mr Moloney had been advised on medical grounds “to step back from the coalface”.

“Under the circumstances, I was happy to come back,” he said.

At the time of his retirement in 2011, Mr Ireton had said there was a need for “new blood” and “new thinking”.

“New people bring new ideas and that is where the focus should be in these challenging times,” Mr Ireton had said.

The charity’s accounts show the value of properties owned by Bóthar in Ireland were reduced by €861,367 in 2010. There was a further property writedown of €736,000 in 2012 described as “an exceptional item” in the 2012 accounts. Bóthar has offices in Limerick, Cork, Dublin, Sligo, and Belfast.

Staff numbers have reduced from 27 in 2012 to 19. Mr Ireton said there were five voluntary redundancies and that the remaining staff left of their own volition. The charity has also scaled back on the number of countries to which it donates aid, from 40 at its height to 20.

Mr Ireton said Bóthar had been forced to “innovate to counteract the recession”. This included switching from airlifting dairy cattle to programme countries to land-lifting. Mr Ireton said it was a humane way of transporting the animals

Bóthar is due to transport its largest ever dairy herd to Romania, a haul comprising 100 dairy cattle donated by farmers from all over the country.

Asked if Irish cattle were suited to more extreme climates in programme countries Mr Ireton said they were “20 times as productive as African cows”.

“We would never be sending cows to unsuitable climates. We would not be sending cows to the Sahara desert. Cows are more productive in warm summers,” Mr Ireton said.

Bóthar donates first-time pregnant heifers to selected families, with a second family benefiting when the offspring is born.

Artificial insemination is used to propagate the line further using discarded AI straws from bulls considered no longer fashionable in Ireland, Mr Ireton said. Bóthar has programmes in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe.