We consider a second-order algebro-differential equation. Equations and systems of second-order differential equations describe the operation of an electronic triode circuit with feedback, rotation of a rigid body with a cavity, reading information from a disk, etc. The highest derivative is preceded by an irreversible operator. This is a Fredholm operator with index zero, kernel of arbitrary dimension, and Jordan chains of arbitrary lengths. Equations with irreversible operators at the highest derivative are called algebro-differential. In this case, the solution to the problem exists under certain conditions on the components of the desired function. To solve the equation with respect to the derivative, the method of cascade splitting of the equation is used, which consists in the stepwise splitting of the equation into equations in subspaces of decreasing dimensions. Cases of one-step and two-step splitting are considered. The splitting uses the result on the solution of a linear equation with Fredholm operator. In each case, the corresponding result is formulated as a theorem. To illustrate the result obtained in the case of one-step splitting, an illustrative example of the Cauchy problem is given.