Honohan’s striking out of repossession order ‘beggars belief’, judge says

The Master of the High Court, who from next week will no longer deal with debt cases, has been criticised by a judge over his decision dismissing a bank's application to repossess a property.

Mr Justice Garrett Simons said "it beggars belief" that Master Edmund Honohan, despite various court decisions that he had no power to do so, had continued to make orders striking out special summonses such as the one brought by Permanent TSB against Geoffrey Carr over the repossession of land and a house at Carney Commons, Carney, Co Tipperary.

“This course of conduct on the part of the Master simply serves to increase legal costs unnecessarily and to cause delay”, Mr Justice Simons said in a High Court judgment on Monday.

It had “no practical benefit whatsoever” and the Master’s order may, in some instances, give defendants a “false sense” of hope, he said.

Those defendants may mistakenly think there had been a lawful adjudication on the merits of their case and that it had been resolved in their favour.

“In truth, the only forum which can adjudicate upon an application for an order for possession, by way of special summons, is the High Court,” he said.

The Master did not have an adjudicative function in this regard. “To state the obvious, the Master does not hold judicial office,” he added.

In relation to the PTSB/Carr case, Mr Justice Simons said the possession order arose out of a mortgage taken out by Mr Carr. PTSB had brought the summons and later applied to have the Master’s strike out order overturned.

The judge said Mr Carr did not attend court or file an affidavit in this case.

While a summons server had said it seemed from enquiries made locally there had not been anyone living in the Carney house for some years, the judge was satisfied service of the papers on Mr Carr had been effected in accordance with a previous court order.

He discharged the Master’s strike out order of October 5th 2018 and ordered the case be transferred back to the High Court list.

Under a practice direction issued last week by Mr Justice Peter Kelly, the president of the High Court, the Master, who deals with cases on the way to trial in the High Court, will from February 4th no longer deal with debt cases from February 4th and they will instead be dealt with by a High Court judge.