A landlord turned up in court yesterday with €10,000 in cash in a bid to stop an apartment being repossessed by his building society.
Judge Jacqueline Linnane told Brendan Scanlan it was extremely imprudent of him to be carrying around that sort of money in cash and advised him to lodge it immediately with the bank.
The Circuit Civil Court had heard that Mr Scanlan and his wife Pamela Gallagher, Fortfield Park, Terenure, Dublin, had borrowed €300,000 from ICS Building Society in 2007 to buy an apartment in West Gate, St Augustine Street, Dublin. He told Judge Linnane he and his wife were renting out the apartment for €750 a month and had reached an agreement with ICS to make repayments of €1,500 a month.
John Donnelly, for the bank, said that in January last ICS had made a new repayments arrangement with the defendants and had agreed to adjourn generally the possession proceedings with liberty to re-enter. He said the agreement had broken down almost immediately and the building society had re-entered its application in April. Several attempts had since been made to contact the defendants but there had been no response.
Mr Donnelly said Mr Scanlan had called to the building society on Tuesday and had told executive staff he had €10,000 cash on him. The cash had not been produced and had not been lodged at the ICS office.
Mr Scanlan, who represented himself and his wife, said ICS staff had told him on Tuesday the court application would go ahead yesterday whether or not he lodged the cash. He had brought it to court.
Judge Linnane said that when the possession proceedings were initiated in 2009, arrears had stood at €22,000 but were now at €84,000. Before the January agreement was reached, the case had appeared in court 11 times. Since April it had been listed several times.
She said Mr Scanlan had paid €5,000 in January and had also made a €2,000 lump sum lodgement before that. Sporadic payments just before a court appearance would not affect arrears of €84,000.
She adjourned the bank’s application for two weeks and told Mr Scanlan that if he had made no arrangements by then to sell the property, she would have to make a possession order to allow the bank to sell it.