'How did this happen?: A court handed Bank of Ireland nearly 8 acres it had no right to
The bank was awarded the possession order against a now-widowed father-of-five.
BANK OF IRELAND was granted an order for possession of land it had no right to during a case against a now-widowed father-of-five over his mortgage arrears.
Yesterday, TheJournal.ie revealed the bank recently admitted it had been charging Kerry man Raymond Flavin a higher rate of interest than it should have been for an unspecified period of time.
Flavin fell back on his monthly repayments after a serious injury in 2013 put him out of work, and the bank began its proceedings in 2014 when he was €18,000 in arrears.
The father-of-five’s wife died of a heart attack at the age of 38 earlier this year.
Despite its recent admission of error, the bank is still fighting his appeal against a possession order granted last year.
Flavin house is built on eight acres of his father’s land. However in the Master’s Court earlier this month, it emerged the bank sought an order for two plots – both the plot Flavin’s mortgaged house was built on, and a remaining 7.45 acres belonging to his father that were not included in the bank’s loan documents.
Ray Flavin with one of his sons
In a sitting on 9 March, Edmund Honohan, Master of the High Court, discovered the discrepancy while reviewing Flavin’s mortgage papers and the possession order.
He told Flavin, who represented himself in the proceedings, that the Circuit Court shouldn’t have granted a possession order for the seven acres “because that’s not part of your house”.
Master Honohan, who deals with some High Court matters before they make their way to a full judge, accused the bank’s legal representatives of attempting to take “the whole enchilada” and questioned how that could happen.
Flavin said he had been unaware of the inconsistency between his mortgage documents and the possession order. He was granted extra time to prepare his appeal, and he will be back in court this month.
Approached for comment by TheJournal.ie, the bank said, “As this is an ongoing legal matter currently before the High Court, Bank of Ireland is precluded from commenting.”
Regulator at committee
In the Oireachtas Finance Committee yesterday, Central Bank governor Philip Lane again confirmed that some people impacted by erroneous rates had lost their homes.
He noted that there was a “systematic and widespread aspect” to the tracker mortgage scandal.
“It manifested itself in different ways, in different institutions over different periods of time, to different customers.
“It does require comprehensive approach; there was a cultural issue that was in favour of the lender and not in favour of the customers.”
He also said that lenders should “never have been as aggressive as they were in terms of how they viewed these contracts”.
Some €120 million has been paid out in redress and compensation as a result of the denial of correct tracker rates, he told the committee. Of that, €78 million was paid in relation to 2,600 accounts identified in a review undertaken ordered at the end of 2015.
Written by Michelle Hennessy and posted on TheJournal.ie
