Former Miss Ireland Pamela Flood and her husband, restaurateur Ronan Ryan, could be facing imprisonment within the next 48 hours for breaching court orders relating to the home in which they have lived cost free for almost 10 years.
Barrister Rudi Neuman told Judge Jacqueline Linnane in the Circuit Civil Court on Tuesday that on Thursday he would be asking her to set aside an insolvency protective order which leaves Mr Ryan temporarily untouchable by creditors.
Mr Neuman, who appeared with Yvonne O’Connell of Amoss Solicitors for private equity fund Tanager, said that as an alternative Tanager would be seeking leave to execute a re-possession order she made against the couple, with their approval, four months ago.
In the event of the court granting Tanager these reliefs on Thursday, Judge Linnane’s decision will be followed by an application for an order attaching and committing Mr Ryan and Ms Flood to prison for contempt of court.
The applications will be made to Judge Linnane in the presence of solicitors and counsel appearing for Mr Ryan and Ms Flood, who was joined to possession proceedings as a notice party following her marriage to Mr Ryan. The couple have their young children living in the €900,000 house at 136 Mount Prospect Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3.
The couple owe a €1.2million mortgage debt on the property which they consented to leave by July 9th at the latest after Tanager told them it would accept the proceeds of a sale of the property and wipe out the remainder of their overall debt and allow them vacate without having to pay a penny for legal costs.
Personal insolvency
Judge Linnane has been told that the couple reneged on their get-out undertaking and, only three weeks before the July 9th deadline, Mr Ryan had gone to a Personal Insolvency Practitioner (PIP) who had brought an application before specialist insolvency judge, Verona Lambe, obtaining the Insolvency Protective Certificate which protects him from his creditors for 70 days. Unless overturned, it has another 35 days to run.
Mr Neuman told the court on Tuesday that Tanager had unsuccessfully made an application to Judge Lambe to vacate her protection order, despite her having ruled that she considered Mr Ryan to have breached Section 118 of the Personal Insolvency Act 2012.
The section states that a debtor is under an obligation to act in good faith . . . and make full disclosure (to the PIP) of all of their assets, income and liabilities and “of all other circumstances that are reasonably likely to have a bearing” on an application for protection under the Insolvency Act.
The court has already heard that Mr Ryan and Ms Flood, who is personally not protected under the Insolvency Protective Certificate, had failed to make any repayments off the mortgage debt for just short of 10 years apart from a payment in February last.
Judge Linnane granted Tanager permission to serve the couple’s legal team with short notice of its intention to seek the several reliefs it requires before the court on Thursday.