Bóthar is a charity operating in Ireland and the United Kingdom specialising in assisting farmers in developing countries to become self-sufficient by giving them livestock.
[5] Members of the inaugural board included former Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, Dermot Clifford and then Church of Ireland Bishop of Limerick, Edward Darling.
[11] However Bóthar continued to send veterinary supplies, vehicles, artificial insemination straws and training literature.
[12] By 2000, Bóthar had sent over 1,000 Irish dairy heifers, 2,000 goats, 1,500 chickens, and 80,000 artificial insemination straws to developing countries.
[14] Following the lifting of embargoes after later foot and mouth outbreaks in Ireland, the heifer programme was expanded to include Cameroon, Rwanda, Uganda, Lebanon, Malawi, Albania and Kosovo.
[20] In December 2012, supporters of Munster Rugby set a new world record for the most Santa hats worn at a public event (12,372), in aid of Bóthar.
Each farmer in project countries, such as Malawi and Uganda, may have only possessed as few as two cows each, with approximately 200 units in aggregate required to sustain a local co-operative.
[24][25] The creamery utilised cows formerly used for prisoner rehabilitation in Ireland, with local residents taught on the topics of animal husbandry and milk production.
[28] Bóthar held a 25th anniversary airlift to Rwanda in 2016, in which Dublin GAA's two-in-a-row winning football manager, Jim Gavin, participated.
[52] In April 2021, Bóthar claimed before the High Court that former chief executive, David Moloney, misappropriated hundreds of thousands of euro donated to it for his own and his associate's personal use.
The judge, who also expressed concerns regarding the costs the charity would incur due to the litigation against Moloney, granted Bóthar permission to seek orders which required the defendant to provide a list of the full value or interest he held in any assets which he possessed.
In one instance, Moloney admitted that a payment of €127,000 was made to an English company Agricultural Innovation Consultants Limited for a project in Rwanda had never been carried out.
[55][56][57] Bóthar claimed that a high-profile event held in 2016 to mark the-then 25th anniversary of the organisation's foundation was used by Moloney to steal €37,200 from the charity.
[59] In May 2021, Fianna Fáil TD John Lahart described the revelations as a "crushing blow" and,[60] raising concerns of "corruption" within charities, stated that "we find ourselves back at the same point again, not due to the corporate outlook or objectives of an organisation, but because of the greed of a few".
Detectives with the Garda National Bureau of Fraud Investigations were expected to expand their inquiries into Africa and the UK for missing funds.
[64] In July 2021, Bóthar made a High Court application to pursue a civil case against the estate of the late Peter Ireton, regarding the matter of allegedly stolen donor funds.
Justice Senan Allen agreed to allow the charity to join the personal representative of Ireton’s estate in civil proceedings, where it sought to recover at least €1.1m it believed had been misappropriated.
[68][69][70][71] In July 2022, Chartered Accountants Ireland (CAI) reportedly opened an investigation into the company's long-time auditor, Grant Thornton.
[72] Following the publication of filed accounts in November 2023, Bóthar stated that “the complete change in leadership at board and CEO level has overseen the embedding of a robust set of financial controls and strong governance across the charity”.
The directors attributed this growth to the company's efforts in revamping its corporate governance systems, which resulted in a rise in legacy donations and gifts in kind.
The cumulative bill from previous years amounted to €1.3 million, however, the financial statements revealed no more extra expenses related to the incident in 2023.
The newspaper also reported that the directors further stated that the organisation had "re-emerged on an innovative and rejuvenated platform," after experiencing an unprecedented decline in operations during recent years, attributed to the suspected mismanagement of corporate resources by some preceding board members and a former CEO.