Peter McVerry Trust ‘just about’ meets threshold for further pause to sale completion order, judge finds

The High Court has further paused an order directing the Peter McVerry Trust to complete its purchase of a €300,000 greenfield site in Co Kerry.

Ms Justice Niamh Hyland found the homelessness charity had “just about” met the “very low threshold” of presenting arguable legal grounds of challenge to the order imposed by Killarney Circuit Court late last month.

The stay is conditional on the trust, which is currently dealing with financial and governance issues, lodging €90,000 into an escrow account within four weeks. If it fails to lodge the sum, the Circuit Court order requiring the sale to be completed within seven days, will take immediate effect, she ruled.

The order’s suspension will last until the High Court determines the charity’s wider appeal, in which it seeks to have the case against it remitted for a trial.

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In securing the Circuit Court order, the intended seller, Co Kerry-based Nocwerdna Limited, alleged it entered into an agreement with the trust last January with a view to constructing a sheltered facility for children and young people on the site.

It claimed the charity was in “continuing and manifest” breach of a written contract, agreed last March, by failing, neglecting or refusing to complete the transaction. Nocwerdna, based at High Street, Killarney, was at all times ready to perform the contract’s terms, it claimed.

[ High Court grants pause to order for Peter McVerry Trust to complete purchase of €300,000 site ]

[ Homeless people often ‘fall through cracks’ of health system ]

The trust denies the claims.

Seeking an extension to the High Court’s earlier grant of a six-day pause to the Circuit Court order, the trust’s barrister, Shane Kelly, submitted on Wednesday that there are conflicts of facts in the case that should have been determined by way of a trial, rather than summarily, as happened here.

The seven-day period in which to comply with the order, which included a bank holiday, was “particularly punitive”, he added.

Elizabeth Murphy, for Nocwerdna, urged the court not to further delay the order’s activation. She submitted that none of the appellant’s arguments met the required threshold.

Ms Justice Hyland found the trust “barely” met the very low threshold for the pause. It has two “arguable” points relating to the disputed effective date of the alleged contract and whether a court can deal with a contractual argument such as this in a summary manner, rather than by a trial, she said.

The charity had “much stronger arguments”, the judge said, when it came to persuading the court that it would be more prejudiced if she refused the stay than Nocwerdna would be if she granted it.

[ Peter McVerry Trust ordered to complete €300,000 purchase of Killarney site for youth sheltered facility ]

She paused the Circuit Court order’s effects on condition that the trust lodges €90,000. She adjourned the wider appeal.

In September, the State’s regulator for housing bodies appointed statutory inspectors to conduct an investigation into financial issues at the trust.

The charity had in July informed the Department of Housing that it was facing serious cash flow pressures that led to auditors PwC being appointed to conduct a financial and governance review.

In a sworn statement to the court, the trust’s deputy chief executive, Elizabeth Pena, said it was “wrong” of Nocwerdna to suggest there was an issue with the trust’s ongoing viability. The charity had, she said, “found itself in short-term financial difficulty which is now being actively managed through the engagement of external expertise and supporting partners (primarily State agencies)”.