Nine-week-old Daisy who died within 24 hours of being bought from ‘Lakeview Pets’

A controversial puppy farm in Ireland, previously condemned in the Dáil for ‘horrific cruelty,’ continues to generate substantial profits nearly ten years after being exposed by BBC’s Panorama, the Irish Mail on Sunday has reported.

Currently known as Lakeview Pets, this dog breeding facility in Poles, Co. Cavan, holds a registration allowing them to breed up to 300 female dogs.

Furthermore, the operation is listed as a ‘Registered Breeder’ on the Department of Agriculture’s roster of approved breeders.

Formerly operating under the name Five Star Paws, the farm was cited for planning violations by Cavan County Council. It also received ‘improvement notices’ following inspections that revealed non-compliance with animal welfare laws.

Despite ongoing protests and pleas from animal welfare activists and celebrities to shut it down, Cavan County Council later permitted the operators to expand their business.

Raymond Cullivan Jr, 38, is officially registered to breed 300 female dogs and regularly posts puppies for sale on the website Dogs.ie.

The online ads include his sister Lauren Cullivan’s number, with pictures of the same puppies used time and again; 25 puppies were listed on Friday.

Mr Cullivan – ordered to pay over €100,000 to the taxman after he was listed on the 2024 list of tax defaulters – is listed as director of Five Star Paws, which recorded profits of almost half a million euro in its most recent financial statement for the year ended February 2025. 

Lauren Cullivan’s company, Pets4You, recorded net assets of almost €100,000 at the end of 2024.

Serious concerns about the conditions of animals bred at the puppy farm have re-emerged after a man recently went to the Co. Cavan operation to buy a nine-week-old Cavapoo puppy.

The tiny animal, named ‘Daisy’ by her new owner, was vomiting in the car on the way to her new home and died two days later, despite a vet’s attempts to save her.

The base of operations for Five Star Paws in Co Cavan. The company previously featured prominently in a BBC Panorama exposé 

The vet’s report – seen by the MoS – found Daisy had not received her full vaccinations and her ‘worming status was not complete’. She was diagnosed with ‘fading puppy syndrome’ based on ‘diagnostic findings’.

The vet noted: ‘This is a serious condition seen in young puppies and is commonly associated with an immature or compromised immune system.

‘A range of factors can contribute to this, including stress, challenges during weaning, incomplete vaccination or worming status due to age, or prior illness.’

In a text to Daisy’s owner, Ian Garvey, Raymond Cullivan Jr insisted the pup was ‘deemed healthy’ when sold. However, he still offered to refund Mr Garvey and pay 50 per cent of the €2,600 vet bill ‘without any admission of liability’.

The puppy farm made international headlines 10 years ago after the BBC Panorama documentary’s airing.

Undercover BBC journalist Sam Poling said she was ‘haunted’ by what she saw on the Cullivan farm.

They filmed breeding bitches who had or were about to give birth in tiny wooden crates, described by People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Paul Murphy as ‘coffin-type whelping boxes,’ confined with their pups ‘unable to move’.

These boxes were later removed after the ISPCA demanded action.

Despite a significant public clamour at the time, the puppy farm has continued to produce so-called designer mixed breeds such as cavapoos, cockapoos, goldendoodles, maltipoos, cavachons, poochons, and dachshunds on a mass scale.

 Charging up to €650 a puppy, the Cullivans invite potential buyers to a bungalow on their site at weekends, where pups are taken from outhouses and put in a playpen in a heated room inside.

The website, Lakeviewpets.com, offers a ‘local service to help you meet and pick up your new puppy right from our location’. The Cullivans also provide an ‘international service to bring your puppy right to your doorstep’.

Their advert promises: ‘With us, you can relax… we handle all the necessary documentation, flights, vaccinations, and requirements to ensure your new puppy is healthy and happy.’

Despite post-documentary outcry, in 2017, Cavan County Council granted the Cullivans planning permission for the ‘retention of building for dog breeding and conversion of buildings for dog breeding and all associated works’.

The large shed at the Co Cavan base of operations for Five Star Paws, which is run by Raymond Cullivan Jnr

Improvement notices obtained under Freedom of Information legislation show that, a year before the BBC programme, the council found ‘a number of non-microchipped dogs on site’ and ‘non-compliance with buyer identity checks’ on the Cullivan puppy farm.

In 2020 the local authority also found the operators ‘non-compliant’ under Section 15 (2) and Section 17 of the Dog Breeding Establishment Act, and ordered ‘immediate’ remedial action.

Section 15 (2) of the Act relates to ‘records’ being kept and made available for inspection. Section 17 relates to the ‘notification of sale or transfer of [a] dog’.

In 2018, then Minister of State Seán Kyne promised in the Dáil to investigate the puppy farm after TD Paul Murphy told the Dáil ‘huge profits are being made from horrific animal cruelty’.

He urged Mr Kyne to take action to stop puppy farms ‘where breeding is on an industrial scale in conditions similar to battery pigs or battery chickens’.

Referencing the BBC documentary, the Dublin South-West TD said: ‘Dogs are kept there in tiny cages and are not allowed outside. They are illegally kept in coffin-type whelping boxes with their pups and are unable to move.’

Contacted this weekend, Lauren Cullivan told the MoS to contact ‘my brother Ray’.

Raymond Cullivan warned our reporter against publishing ‘slander’ and said his solicitor would be in touch.

In a statement to the MoS regarding Daisy, Mr Cullivan’s solicitor said his client ‘wishes to strongly deny any allegation or impropriety or negligence in relation to the welfare of the puppy’.

He added: ‘The puppy was perfectly well when [s]he left our client’s premises. Vet evidence would appear to show consumption of some sort of plastic which most definitely did not occur on our client’s premises.

‘As a good will gesture our client refunded the purchase monies in full and made a contribution to the vet’s fees.’

The statement added: ‘Our client is fully licensed, and his business and premises are fully compliant with all statutory regulations and subject to regular inspections.’

Pete Wedderburn, TV vet and former chair of the recently merged NSPCA (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), told the MoS one of the main issues facing animal welfare is the ‘consistency of inspections and making sure they’re done properly’.

But he noted: ‘Ireland is quite good at putting in laws, but much less good at enforcing those laws.’

Dr Wedderburn said there are a ‘very small’ number of breeders with more than 300 dogs and ‘a lot of people would dispute whether it is at all possible to do it well’.

He told the MoS: ‘Puppy farming was originally seen as a reasonable alternative to farming, and why not diversify?

‘But what’s missed in that is you’re not only producing animals, you’re creating animals that become pets,’ and it’s ‘really important’ puppies have ‘excellent socialisation in the first three months of their lives’.

He said: ‘What we know is if dogs are deprived of that, a bit like children who have a tough childhood, those children can have difficulties with relationships and social skills, and exactly the same applies to dogs.’

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine assumed responsibility for all policy and legislation in relation to the Dog Breeding Establishments Act 2010 last August.

However, it said local authorities ‘retain responsibility for all operational and enforcement matters’.

The department this weekend said that it does not comment on individual cases.

But in a statement to the MoS, a spokesman said that it ‘strongly condemns the mistreatment of any animal and takes the matter of animal welfare most seriously’.

They added: ‘Neglect of or causing unnecessary suffering to animals is not acceptable in our society.’

In response to queries, Cavan County Council said the decision to grant retention permission was ‘approved by An Bord Pleanála… upholding the decision of Cavan County Council’.

A spokesman said the local authority is ‘obliged to maintain a register of Dog Breeding Establishments by law’.

Under the Dog Breeding Establishment Act, breeders must register with their local council.

Councils have the authority to serve closure notices if they deem it necessary, and after consultation with the NSPCA.

The local authority then has to make an application to the District Court in order to remove the breeder from the register.

A source told the MoS: ‘It’s just one of the reasons why the current legislation is so weak.’

‘I didn’t have her for 24 hours, now she’s buried in my garden’ 

Ian Garvey brought Daisy home – but she was in such a bad state she didn’t survive beyond 24 hours

IAN GARVEY decided to get a new puppy after his beloved dog died last year aged 16.

Last month, after a search online, Mr Garvey saw an ad for a Cavapoo puppy, a popular Cavalier King Charles Spaniel/Poodle hybrid. He contacted the breeder on Dogs.ie.

The finance professional from Lucan in Co. Dublin was told he could view the dog the following Saturday. But alarm bells began to ring not long after he arrived at a rural bungalow in Cavan.

A young woman, whom he now knows to be Lauren Cullivan – previously secretly filmed by an undercover BBC Panorama crew – was waiting for him with a microchip reader in hand.

In an extension adjoining the house, there were a number of puppies in a playpen and the heat was on full blast.

Mr Garvey told the MoS: ‘It looked like a good setup. But when I went to see the pups, they were different dogs to the ones advertised.

‘She told me on the phone she only had two females, now here she was showing me another two. I was a little confused but agreed to take one for €650.’

The puppy, Daisy, ‘smelled strongly of perfume’ and began to vomit on the way home.

He took her straight to the vet, who gave her medication.

‘I tried everything to get her to eat and she wasn’t drinking water. She was biting the water, and I wondered was she even fully weaned.’

Mr Garvey brought Daisy back to the vet the next morning, then texted Ms Cullivan, who rang him and told him to bring back the puppy and that ‘she’d give me a new puppy’.

‘I was so confused. I told her, “She’s in critical condition, she’s dehydrated, in an incubator and on a drip. I’m not taking her out of the vet.”

‘She replied: “The vet will cost you an arm and a leg, bring her here and I’ll bring her to my vet. Any cost at your vet is on you.”

‘I was shocked. She didn’t care about the welfare of the dog; she just wanted it back. She didn’t want any comeback to her.’

Daisy continued to deteriorate and had to be transferred to a 24-hour vet that night.

The following morning, the vet rang Mr Garvey and told him, while the puppy was still alive, she was extremely unwell.

‘The vet said the best thing is to put her down now. I was so upset. I didn’t want to leave her. She had a s*** time coming into the world, I wasn’t going to leave her on her own when she died.

‘I didn’t even have her 24 hours and now she’s buried out in my back garden.’

The vet asked Mr Garvey where he got Daisy and asked to see the ad and the breeder establishment number.

‘He looked it up and I found out she was born on a farm that is legally allowed breed 300 bitches. Lauren Cullivan’s name was on the microchip.’

Mr Garvey was later contacted by a friend who works for the Veterinary Council of Ireland. Checks showed Daisy was taken to a vet by Raymond Cullivan Jr to receive a parvo virus vaccine the day before he bought her.

He contacted the vet to query why he was administering vaccines for a puppy farmer. Almost straight away, he got a call from Mr Cullivan, by whom he had not been contacted before. Mr Garvey said: ‘He said it was Ray, and that I had been dealing with his sister Lauren. He gave out to me for ringing his vet and calling him a puppy farmer and threatened to get me done for slander.

‘I was fuming. That vet rang Ray straight away.’

Mr Garvey reported the vet to the Veterinary Council of Ireland and reported the Cullivans to the Department of Agriculture and Cavan County Council.

And mystery surrounds yet another call he received from Mr Cullivan, who questioned him about a separate call of complaint Mr Garvey’s aunt had made to the council about what happened to the puppy.

Mr Garvey also obtained documents in response to a Freedom of Information request confirming Raymond and Lauren Cullivan were inspected no fewer than 38 times since 2012.

Three reports – seen by the MoS – reveal improvement notices were sent to the Cullivans in 2015 and 2020 due to failing to microchip animals and in relation to record-keeping.

Mr Garvey also reported their advert on the online dog-selling platform Dogs.ie after he realised they were repeatedly posting the same ad.

‘He’s not posting all the dogs he has for sale; just the same pictures over and over and tricking people to go down [then he’ll] give you another pup.

‘Every ad has six pups and there has to be a microchip attached to each dog. I asked Animark [who register the chips] how many microchips were registered by the Cullivans in the last year to be told they couldn’t give me that information.

‘I can’t let this go. It’s just shocking. How they managed to stay open is beyond me.’