Efforts by a company backed by former rugby star Ronan O’Gara and developer Michael O’Flynn to block a personal insolvency arrangement put in place for another shareholder in the business have been dismissed.
Ezeon Entertainment Ltd wanted the High Court to set aside an order the court made in July 2022 where an earlier appeal by Mr O’Flynn against a Circuit Court decision approving a personal insolvency arrangement (PIA) for John O’Driscoll was dismissed.
Ezeon Entertainment Limited, in which the three men were shareholders, purchased a pub in Cork called The Silly Goose in 2007, which Mr O’Driscoll ran. The three men, who were known to each other, were equal shareholders in the venture, which was funded by loans from Anglo Irish Bank.
Ezeon claimed Mr O’Driscoll had allegedly misappropriated a total of €15,725 in company funds at different times in 2019. Mr O’Driscoll strenuously denied all such claims and in his judgment, Mr Justice Alexander Owens said Mr O’Driscoll had paid and Ezeon received €15,725.
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Ezeon, he said, were looking to set aside a Circuit Court order “in a manner unknown to law”.
Earlier, opposing the application, Bernard Dunleavy SC for the personal insolvency practitioner told the court the application was “utterly irregular and unknown to the court”. He said it was “intimately bound up with Mr O’Flynn’s unsuccessful application to the court” to appeal the Circuit Court order approving the PIA.
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On that occasion, Mr O’Flynn who was looking to overturn the PIA over an alleged debt owed to him, was prevented from doing so after the High Court found he lacked legal standing to do so.
That hearing was told that in 2014 Mr O’Flynn took over the borrowings and refinanced Ezeon for €2.2 million, which had risen to €2.5 million by 2018. Arising out of that debt, it was alleged that Mr O’Driscoll, from Ovens in Cork, owes at least €950,000 to Mr O’Flynn.
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Mr Dunleavy told Mr Justice Owens, who was deciding on a preliminary issue of whether he had jurisdiction to hear the application, that
setting aside the High Court dismissal order would put “Mr O’Flynn back before the court”.
Moving the application, counsel for Ezeon, Martin Hayden SC, with Keith Farry, submitted the O’Driscoll PIA process was “operated at a level and speed which is extraordinary”. He added it had been signed off over a bank holiday weekend in March 2022.
He said the decision of the court in this case would have an “impact on the entire insolvency system”.
Mr Hayden said Ezeon wanted the order set aside and there to be a hearing. “It’s nothing to do with Mr O’Flynn,” he added.
Mr Justice Owens granted costs against Ezeon but put a stay on the order for two months in the event of an appeal.
Mr O’Flynn’s appeal against the dismissal of his earlier challenge against the PIA will go ahead before the Supreme Court in June.
