Court urged to annul woman's bankruptcy after bank admitted overcharging

A woman sought bankruptcy and lost her family home after Bank of Ireland charged her more than twice what she ought to be paying on her mortgage, the High Court has been told.

Deirdre Dennis said she was left financially crippled and personally devastated by overcharging on monthly repayments between June 2012 and December 2017 to Bank of Ireland.

Arising out of what she believed to be her debts, Ms Dennis successfully petitioned the High Court to be adjudicated a bankrupt in October 2017. In an application heard by Ms Justice Teresa Pilkington on Monday, she sought an order annulling her bankruptcy.

Her counsel Eoin McGonigal SC said the bank acknowledged its “catastrophic error” after she had exited bankruptcy in October 2018, and after her former family home at Seaview Terrace, Killala, Co Mayo had been sold by the bank.

In February 2019, Bank of Ireland wrote to Ms Dennis after it had completed a review of her mortgage under their Tracker Mortgage Examination.

In its correspondence, Bank of Ireland had acknowledged and unreservedly apologised for failing to provide Ms Dennis with a tracker mortgage at a time when she was entitled to one. Bank of Ireland said she was entitled to compensation, redress and a refund of interest charged and accepted its failure was a factor in her losing her home. It also withdrew its claim in her bankruptcy for amounts totalling €115,000.

Mr McGonigal, with Michael O’Sullivan BL, instructed by solicitor Evan O’Dwyer, said, when seeking to be adjudicated a bankrupt, Ms Dennis believed she owed Bank of Ireland some €171,000 on foot of loans taken with the bank. Her then home was valued as being worth €73,000. She had additional debts of €66,000 to Revenue and another financial institution. She claims, if she had all the relevant information from Bank of Ireland in October 2017, she would not have sought bankruptcy.

Ms Justice Pilkington was told the official assignee in bankruptcy was not opposing the application.

Bank of Ireland, represented by Bernard Dunleavy SC, said it did not wish to make any submissions to the court.

In a sworn statement, Ms Dennis said she spent years “fighting to keep my head above water”. Despite her struggles, including her business failure in 2008, she always tried to maintain her mortgage payments as best she could. She said she pleaded with Bank of Ireland to apply a common sense approach to the level of her repayments and she made many personal sacrifices.

In 2014, she said she had to stop making repayments and had left the property which was in negative equity. In 2015 Bank of Ireland sought an order for possession of her family home so it could sell the property and she consented to that. In early 2019 Bank of Ireland admitted it had overcharged her, resulting in her having to pay twice what she was contractually obliged to do when she was trying to make ends meet.

She now rents a property at Killala Road, Ballina, Co Mayo. She says she ended up paying twice as much for had she been paying on the mortgage for her own home, which she said she was “forced” to leave. She could not understand why her Bank of Ireland account was not examined sooner, or why it continued to pursue possession proceedings against her in 2015 when it should have known her loan account would come under examination.

She wondered why Bank of Ireland continued to “persecute” and pursue her until she had lost her home when they knew her accounts were affected by their failings.

“Why did I have to sacrifice so much at a time where, had the bank been honest with me, at a time where had the bank not deceitfully stolen from me for years, where I struggled to make ends meet from month to month, from one personal tragedy to the next, that my life would have been normal, bearable, maybe even enjoyable,” she said.

The judge said it was “a very unusual case” and she would give a written judgment “as soon as possible.”