The High Court has refused Pepper Finance permission to execute an eight-year-old possession order over a property at Curraighgraigue, Borrisoleigh, Co Tipperary, while confirming that Pepper is now the proper plaintiff in the mortgage proceedings.
Derry O’Donnell and Mary Rodgers borrowed €170,000 in 2004, secured on the property. The judgment records that no repayment has been made since 2014, with arrears of about €189,000 and an overall balance of approximately €260,000.
Shoreline Residential obtained an order for possession in July 2017. The mortgage and loan were subsequently transferred to Pepper in 2019, and Pepper was registered as owner of the charge.
In July 2025, the Circuit Court substituted Pepper as plaintiff and granted it leave to execute the possession order. Mr O’Donnell appealed.
Ms Justice Nessa Cahill upheld the substitution. She found that the transfer deeds, Land Registry material and account correspondence established on the balance of probabilities that Pepper owned both the loan and mortgage. The registration of the charge was not, by itself, treated as decisive proof of ownership of the underlying debt.
The result was different on enforcement. Because more than six years had passed since the possession order, Pepper had to give a reasonable explanation for the entire lapse of time before execution could issue.
The court accepted that the original stay on the order, a 2019 execution order and part of the Covid-19 period explained some inactivity. However, Pepper relied principally on four letters sent between September 2021 and February 2024, together with an unsuccessful home visit, to explain later delay.
The judge found those contacts too limited and generic. There were lengthy unexplained gaps, including about 20 months between June 2022 and February 2024 and a further 14 months before the 2025 application.
The appeal against leave to execute was therefore allowed. The possession order itself was not set aside, and Pepper remains substituted as plaintiff. The court provisionally proposed that each side bear its own costs.