The High Court has ordered Joseph Doyle to hand over access devices for a Finglas property and restrained him from entering or attending there pending trial of a trespass action brought by Beltany Property Finance Designated Activity Company. The order followed an interlocutory application; the court did not finally determine the action or Doyle’s claim to have acquired the property through adverse possession.
Mr Justice Allen said the finance company was entitled to possession as mortgagee and had established its paper title. Doyle said he had occupied the house and lands at 5 Meakstown Cottages continuously from 2004, without permission, and argued that the title had been extinguished by the time the loan and security were transferred to the company in 2017.
The company’s evidence traced the property’s purchase by Thomas McFeely in 2006, with a €270,000 loan secured by a charge. McFeely was adjudicated bankrupt in 2012, and the Official Assignee executed a deed of voluntary surrender in favour of Allied Irish Banks in 2015. The loan and security were transferred to the plaintiff in 2017.
Doyle’s affidavits described moving into the property after its occupants left in 2004, renovating it and building structures on the site. He denied knowing about McFeely’s purchase or instructing solicitors whose documents showed a proposed purchase in his name. Later correspondence from a solicitor who had access to the former firm’s file indicated that the intended purchaser was Doyle’s son, Joseph Doyle Junior, and that the file had been opened on his instructions. Doyle said he was estranged from his son and had no knowledge of the transaction. The judge did not resolve the disputed history at this interlocutory stage.
The judge accepted that Doyle had an arguable case that he possessed the property from 2004, but found no bona fide issue to be tried as to whether that occupation was without permission. He considered it incredible, in the legal sense applied in earlier case law, that the person who funded the purchase and serviced the mortgage did so unaware that Doyle was living there, or that McFeely borrowed from the bank without knowing and permitting the position on the ground.
Because no bona fide issue engaged the principles governing interlocutory injunctions, the judge said the plaintiff was entitled to an injunction. He added that if such an issue had arisen, he would have found the balance of convenience strongly against an injunction and would have directed an expedited trial.
The order requires Doyle, pending trial, to deliver to the plaintiff any keys, alarm codes, locks and other security or access devices for the property, and restrains him from trespassing, entering or otherwise attending there. The underlying dispute remains for trial.