Interest being charged to farmer over disputed debt ‘immoral’

Clare’s County Registrar has told a court that interest rates being charged by a financial institution to a Co Clare farmer are “immoral” and “outlandish”.

Patrick Wallace was commenting on Friday on an application for an order for repossession by the Home Funding Corporation Ltd for a 26-acre site.

The application was one of 131 before the County Registrar’s Court for repossession.

In the case of the Home Funding Corporation Ltd, Mr Wallace said in a recent RTÉ Primetime programme "serious allegations were made against the company that they have activities throughout the world and that it is basically a money-laundering operation".

He told the court "the allegations were not refuted in any reasonable way" and that the owner of the company has been "under scrutiny in the courts in England and there are serious question marks about the activities of this company, and the interest rates they are charging are outlandish and immoral".

In the case before the court, solicitor James Nash said he acted for the farmer in 2005 when the farmer's brother paid €35,000 to the company in full and final settlement of his client's debt.

Nine years

Mr Nash said he paid over the money in the belief that it was full and final settlement, and never heard anything else about it for nine years until “out of the blue, it came back in”.

Mr Nash said there was a remaining debt of €8,000 after the €35,000 settlement, and now the Home Funding Corporation was seeking €80,000 from the farmer “without any notification to anyone”.

He said Home Funding had claimed his client made two payments of €1,000 and €2,000 in 2009, but now in their new affidavit they acknowledged they had no record of any payment in this case.

He said: “They are dropping that claim which I think was thrown in in an effort to state that the €35,000 was not a full and final settlement.”

Accrued interest

Mr Nash said the High Court recently dismissed a case taken by Home Funding, who were pursuing a Roscommon couple for €1.4 million in accrued interest on a €40,000 mortgage.

Commenting on the allegations against Home Funding Corporation, Mr Wallace said: “There is a web of companies throughout the world and a judge in England has dismissed that as meaningless with the sole purpose of dealing with transfer of monies, and behind all of that there is one owner.”

Solicitor Siobhan McMahon, an agent for Dublin legal firm Crowley Millar, which is representing Home Funding Corporation, said: "I am unfamiliar with that, County Registrar."

Mr Wallace replied: “Crowley Millar are familiar with that, I’m sure.”

Mr Wallace said he would adjourn making any decision in the case to May 15th.

In only one case on Friday, Mr Wallace granted to Permanent TSB a repossession order on a property on consent of the borrowers against one couple, and put a stay on the order for four months.

In the cases before the court, EBS was seeking the highest number of repossessions (24), with AIB seeking 21, Ulster Bank 18, Permanent TSB 15 and Bank of Ireland 11.

Some cases were adjourned as it was their first time on the list.

In a number of other cases where solicitors were seeking orders for repossession, Mr Wallace granted adjournments to applications for possession to allow the borrowers more time to get financial advice and to furnish documentation to the banks in question.