THE HIGH Court yesterday granted mortgage lenders possession of four properties, including a building site, as 51 cases got under way at the weekly chancery summonses hearing.
Almost half of the cases listed before Mr Justice John MacMenamin were taken by subprime lender Start Mortgages.
The remainder of the cases were taken by ACC Bank, Bank of Ireland, IIB Homeloans, GE Capital Woodchester, EBS, National Irish Bank and Ulster Bank.
Twelve new cases were listed before the court.
Possession of a partially built property was granted to GE Capital Woodchester, for which in excess of €288,000 was owed.
The court heard that the defendants had made no mortgage repayments since August 2007, with the exception of a payment of €300. As a result, arrears of €37,108 had accrued.
Granting a possession order for the vacant property, the judge said “people who don’t contact their lender or come to court make the situation impossible”.
Bank of Ireland was granted possession of a 4.5 hectare building site in Co Wexford.
ACC Bank and Ulster Bank were both granted possession of properties on consent of the defendant.
In both cases, costs were awarded at Circuit Court level, as the case could have been brought in that court.
Many cases were adjourned to give defendants more time to sell their properties or to come to an agreement with the lending institution.
Meanwhile, not-for-profit housing association Respond called on the Government to remove the culture of fear that was developing among Irish families as a result of the large number of repossession cases (almost 50) being heard each week in the High Court.
Respond spokesman John Hannigan called for the establishment of a mortgage support scheme for homeowners.
“A lot of people were victims of reckless lending on the part of our financial institutions and it is unjust that banks have failed to pass the benefit of recent Government guarantees on to struggling Irish families,” he said.
Mr Hannigan said those who were given mortgages that far exceeded their income should be allowed to renegotiate their mortgage to a level appropriate to their income.
“We are proposing that they can defer up to 70 per cent of the interest of their monthly mortgage repayments for no more than two years, similar to the arrangement recently agreed in Britain,” he said.
However, Mr Hannigan said that this was “simply a method of deferring payment, not cancelling it”.