An elderly businessman wants an urgent hearing of a challenge by suspended Co Roscommon solicitor Declan O’Callaghan to a recommendation that he be struck off for professional misconduct, the High Court has been told.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) recommended last summer that the High Court make a strike-off order arising from Mr O’Callaghan’s handling of a 2007 land deal involving Nirvanna Property Holdings Ltd, a company of 80-year-old businessman Tom Fleming. The tribunal cannot itself make a strike-off order; that is a matter for the president of the High Court to decide.
Mr O’Callaghan has brought a challenge aimed at overturning the SDT decision on grounds including alleged breach of his right to fair procedures. The tribunal took issue with the formulation of his challenge and the High Court last October adjourned the matter to allow time for Mr O’Callaghan’s legal team to consider the SDT’s complaints.
When it returned on Monday before the president of the High Court, Mr Justice David Barniville, barrister Michael Mullooly, for Mr O’Callaghan, sought an adjournment to February 17th.
Ireland’s 11 billionaires saw their wealth grow by a third to €50bn in 2024
Pancreatic cancer: ‘I just can’t explain what it felt like hearing those words’
Remote working in Ireland: People ‘are being pushed back to the office against their will’
‘The phone would ring and it would be Mike Scott from the Waterboys or Bono from U2. Everyone wanted to talk to my father’
His side was to have received an affidavit from Mr Fleming on January 16th and got that on January 19th, he said. He needed time to consider the affidavit and provide a reply.
Barrister Ruadhán Ó Ciaráin, for Mr Fleming, said the matter was “extremely urgent”. Mr Fleming had been in hospital and fell over the weekend when he came to swear the affidavit, counsel said.
There was “absolutely nothing new” in Mr Fleming’s 19-page affidavit, he said. Nirvanna had made a “very simple” complaint against Mr O’Callaghan, land was to be transferred by Nirvanna and was transferred, Nirvanna was to get a consideration and it had not.
Mr O’Callaghan had offered “an extremely convoluted explanation” to that complaint, he said.
Barrister Nessa Bird, for the Law Society, said it needed time to finalise a motion regarding the sanction application based on the SDT findings but expected that to be done by the end of this week.
Mr Justice Barniville said, for reasons including upcoming court hearings in Kilkenny, he would adjourn the matter to February 17th.
The three-member SDT had found Mr O’Callaghan guilty of four counts of professional misconduct over his handling of the 2007 land transfer.
Mr Fleming claimed Nirvanna never received €250,000 for selling the land to a now-deceased businessman. Mr O’Callaghan denied the sum was owed and disputed the transaction was for “sale” of the lands.
The tribunal upheld the complaint, finding Mr O’Callaghan breached his duty of care to the company, provided inadequate professional services, and purported to act for vendor and purchaser in a transaction where there was “a clear conflict of interest”.
In making its strike-off recommendation, the tribunal said it had regard to other findings of misconduct previously made by it against Mr O’Callaghan, who has been suspended as a solicitor since 2018 arising from a separate Law Society investigation into matters at his now-defunct practice Kilrane O’Callaghan & Co, which was based in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
