Woman jailed for refusing to vacate €1m home fails to get Supreme Court appeal

A woman in her tenth week in prison for not complying with court orders directing her to leave a €1m south Dublin property subject of possession orders has failed to persuade the Supreme Court to hear a further appeal over her jailing.

The woman also sought bail pending appeal but the three judge Supreme Court said, as it was not granting permission for an appeal, no issue of bail arose.

In a determination published on Friday, Mr Justice Donal O’Donnell, Mr Justice Peter Charleton and Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan said the woman had raised no issue of general public importance entitling her to an appeal and nor was an appeal in the interests of justice.

The woman, who had represented herself in her proceedings and was also assisted by anti-eviction activist Jerry Beades, had received a full hearing in the High Court and Court of Appeal.

The issues she was seeking to raise in the Supreme Court, including her claim she was not told in the High Court of the possibility of applying for legal aid, were fully addressed in the two lower courts, it said.

It is a “fundamental feature” of any system based on the rule of law that, where a final determination is made, parties must obey the orders of the court, “whatever their subjective views of the merits of the decision”.

Such orders are normally made, as in this case, after a full hearing in a trial court and a full appeal.

Last month, when dismissing the woman’s appeal over the High Court’s April 27th order jailing her, the Court of Appeal said, if there is to be any change in the status quo, the woman must “face up to the reality of the situation as the law has determined it to be” and purge her contempt.

She could do so by undertaking to leave the house with her two teenage children, who have remained in the property while she has been jailed where they are being looked after by a friend of their father, the woman’s estranged partner, it said.

While the woman contended she had obtained orders in family law proceedings including for a right of residence in the property and would be surrendering her family law rights if she vacated it, those issues had been “conclusively” determined against her in earlier proceedings, it said.

The woman was jailed on April 27th over contempt of possession orders granted to EBS Ltd in 2015 which were upheld on appeal but stayed to April 2017.

The property is one of six investment properties purchased by the woman’s estranged partner with loans from the EBS. His solicitors wrote to the lender in 2008 saying none of the properties was a family home.

EBS Ltd got a €9.4m judgment against the man in 2011 over default the loans, secured on the properties.

Beltany Property Finance acquired the loans last year and retained Paul McCann, previously appointed by EBS as receiver over the properties, to deal with them.

The estranged partner has been adjudicated bankrupt and was alleged by the receiver to have been a party with the woman in breaking into some of the properties. He was also described by the receiver as a “fugitive” from efforts to also serve contempt proceedings on him.