A 70-year-old Fermanagh farmer who was the first person in Northern Ireland to be jailed for illegal dumping has paid a £50,000 fine but still owes £20,000.

In 2006 David Erwin Allingham was sentenced to nine months in prison after thousands of tons of waste from the Republic of Ireland was found buried on his land at Slattinagh, Garrison.

His 67-year-old wife, Freda, a nurse, was sentenced to four months in prison, suspended for two years, for her part in the crime.

David Allingham claimed he was paid between £6,000 and £8,000 to allow waste to be dumped on his land. However, the Assets Recovery Agency sent him and his wife a bill for £80,000 - the estimated amount of money they made from their criminal activities.

On Friday at Omagh Crown Court, sitting in Belfast, a defence barrister told Judge Philip Babington that the £80,000 “has now been paid in full”.

However, he said there was an outstanding balance of around £37,000 in interest which has yet to paid.

David Allingham has paid £48,520.80 but still owes £22,215.68.

Freda Allingham has paid £32,347.20 but still owes £14,810.59.

The defence barrister said that he had been told by the prosecution that “the clock has stopped running on interest payments”.

The court heard that the Allinghams were in talks with other family members in an effort to raise the funds to pay off the outstanding balance.

The defence barrister added that some of the money would come from the sale of property and also from selling off livestock “but that would depend on the current market value”.

“We have been in discussions with the prosecution and we would ask for a three week adjournment to allow those discussions to continue,” he stated.

A prosecution lawyer said the Crown had no objection to the adjournment.

The judge remarked: “Well, that is good progress.” He agreed to adjourn the confiscation hearing to Londonderry Crown Court on September 12.

It was in December 2003 that officials from the Department of Environment found household waste from Cork and Wexford illegally buried on the Allingham’s farm.

A Crown Court jury subsequently found the couple guilty of keeping controlled waste and having it without a licence. An estimated 4,500 tonnes of domestic rubbish were found buried on their land.

In 2010 their 65 acre Border farm was the first of 20 sites in Northern Ireland to be cleared of rubbish in a multi-million pound clean-up. It was given priority because effluent from it was already leaching out into the surrounding countryside. The site is in an environmentally sensitive area beside a river which flows into Lough Melvin, an important trout and salmon fishery and a source of drinking water for thousands of homes.

The rubbish was dug up and taken by lorry to a licensed landfill dump at Ballynacarrick, near Rossnowlagh in County Donegal.

At the time the then Environment Minister Edwin Poots revealed that it would cost the Northern Ireland taxpayer £600,000 to clear up the mess at Garrison and another illegal dump at Trillick. He said the total cost of repatriating the waste from all 20 sites would be in the “lower millions”.

However, under an agreement between Minister Poots and his Dublin counterpart, the Irish Government ended up paying 80 per cent of the cost of repatriating the waste, estimated at 36 million euro, or more than £30 million, to the Irish taxpayer.

An estimated 250,000 tonnes of waste from the Republic of Ireland was buried in illegal sites in Northern Ireland between 2002 and 2004. The illegal dumping grew out of the ever increasing landfill costs in the Republic.

Criminals soon realised huge profits were to be made by dumping the rubbish over the Border in Northern Ireland.