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Family in €1.7m debt lose south Dublin home

By April 18, 2019 No Comments

A businessman and his wife, who owe more than €1m in mortgage arrears, have lost their €2m south Dublin family home.

A judge handed the property, in the affluent suburb of Foxrock, back to the governors and company of the Bank of Ireland.

Barrister Tomás Keys told Judge Jacqueline Linnane in the Circuit Civil Court that Adrian Blanc of Brighton Avenue, Foxrock, Co Dublin, and his wife, Lucille, owed €1,128,000 in arrears alone on a 2008 mortgage they had taken out over 15 years with ICS building society.

Mr Keys, who appeared for Bank of Ireland, said the Blancs had borrowed €1.7m from the society when their home was valued at €2.5m and used it to pay off an existing loan. ICS loans had been transferred to the bank in 2014 under the Central Bank Act.

Keys told the court monthly repayments on the mortgage were €12,561 but nothing had been paid off the loan for three years up until November last year. For the past six months the Blancs had been making monthly payments of only €1,000 and arrears were mounting at the rate of €11,560 a month.

He said there was now an outstanding total debt of €1,764,000 and the Blancs had refused to sell or allow their home to be sold to pay off all or part of the debt and had, at every stage, attempted to inhibit the bank. When applying for costs after Judge Linnane had made an order for possession in favour of the bank, Mr Keys said “not one inch has been given” by the Blancs.

Judge Linnane, in the absence of a plea for a stay to allow the Blancs to find alternative accommodation, agreed with Mr Keys that it would, in the normal run of events, be some time before the sheriff would be acting on the court order. Only Mr Blanc and his solicitor appeared in court.