By Leslie Walsh
A PENSIONER undergoing his fourth battle with cancer said he doesn’t know where to turn next in a long-running battle with local animal charity Assisi which he feels is trying to ‘intimidate’ him from his Conlig property.
Noel Currie, and his wife Elizabeth, who depends on a wheelchair, said the pair live constantly with colds due to a ‘constant stream’ of flood water coming down the hill to the rear of their adjacent properties on land owned by Assisi Animal Sanctuary.
The pensioner said the issue lies with a drain to the rear of his and Assisi’s properties which it has not maintained for years and has been buried by extensive growth of vegetation.
He said the neglect causes water to run over the surface straight into the Curries’ property.
The 77 year-old, who recently underwent an operation as part of his cancer treatment, fears what will become of his wife if he succumbs to the disease after spending his life savings trying to get Assisi to deal with the drainage issues.
Mr Currie believes the charity also wants to expand its premises and is trying to push him and his wife out to facilitate their plans. The centre is unable to expand to the rear, due to the water main pipe that supplies Bangor.
The pensioner said he ‘doesn’t know how they sleep at night’ considering the hardship he and Elizabeth (75), have endured in recent years, in the home they bought in 1974.
Two former workers at the charity, including one who raised the money to purchase the Conlig property in 1998, have described the stress Noel Currie and his wife Elizabeth have endured as ’deplorable’ and believe their health has suffered as a result.
Maureen Smith, a former board member of the Friends of Assisi and chair of fundraising, who raised £80,000 to purchase the Conlig centre from the USPCA which formerly occupied the site said the Curries had ‘always been there helping Assisi with every fundraising event’ since the sanctuary opened, even giving shelter to escaped animals on a number of occasions.
Former employee Eleanor Coulter shares her sentiments, stating the Curries have been ‘treated very badly’ by Assisi. Mr Currie explained how the saga began in 2015 when he tried to purchase land to the front of his property.
He bid £16,000 for a quarter of an acre, but when he found out higher bids were being submitted by Assisi, he agreed to step out of the competition on a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ after the charity said it would allow him the share of the plot.
He said he had shaken hands in his kitchen, witnessed by his son and son-in-law, with a former board member.
Mr Currie said he was asked however, at the time, to wait briefly while the board member dealt with the personal matter of a family illness.
“Days and weeks went past and then months and nothing happened,” said Noel. When the deal was never honoured, Mr Currie said ‘that’s when my world fell round me.
That was the day my trust in Assisi failed’. In the years that followed, Mr and Mrs Currie claimed there was a determination among some quarters of Assisi management to ‘get the Curries out’. Mr Currie, a member of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society and the borough’s last wet-cast concrete producer, creates stone mouldings to repair heritage buildings, and has been unable to work for the past couple of months due to ill health.
The cost of repairing the drain is in the region of between £60,000 to £70,000, but Mr Currie could have carried out the repairs himself, ‘but they declined’. “I had the health and resources to do it back then but they have wasted the time,” he said, stating he was now too ill to complete the task.
As a result of the water damage, Mr Currie said their home, previously valued at £550,000, was now worth only £250,000, ‘if we got a buyer’, he said.
“We have suffered physically, mentally and financially and have spent our life savings that people our age use for going on cruises; it’s all gone.
We haven’t been on holiday for five years.” “Assisi is all about donations and they can use public money to pay their solicitor but we don’t have any money left,” he said.
Mr Currie has previously been vilified on social media by supporters of the animal charity over his objections to planning permission on land near the charity’s Old Belfast Road premises.
“They have money to do everything but help us as we helped them when they started,” he said.
“They can throw money to solicitors, barristers, architects, noise consultants but no money to remedy the drainage to our satisfaction.” The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland has confirmed it has been ‘engaging with the trustees of the charity, Assisi Animal Sanctuary’.
“In line with our remit as the charity regulator, our focus with this type of engagement is to provide regulatory oversight and to ensure that charities are properly governed.”
Stating however, that it cannot comment on individual cases, or on specific allegations’ to ensure compliance with data protection legislation and to protect the integrity of any current or future enquiries, it said ‘to avoid any risk of prejudicing current or future work, we are not in a position to provide further details’.
Alex Harbinson, the chair of the Friends of Assisi Animal Sanctuary, said the issue with the Curries is the subject of ongoing legal proceedings and discussions between the parties.
“In those circumstances, it would not be appropriate for Assisi Animal Sanctuary to comment in detail on the allegations, claims or disputed facts referred to in your email,” said Mr Harbinson.
Mr Harbinson, an Alliance councillor on Ards and North Down Council, added: “We would ask that any reporting reflects the fact that these are allegations made by one party to another in an ongoing legal dispute.
“Assisi takes its legal obligations seriously and has sought to engage appropriately through the relevant legal processes,” said Mr Harbinson.
“As the matter remains ongoing, it would not be appropriate for the charity to comment further at this stage.”
