The High Court has brought a decade-old dispute over loans secured on farmland in Buttevant, County Cork, to an end after finding that the plaintiffs took no procedural step in the case for almost nine years.
Mr Justice Sean Gillane refused Anne Pounds and Liam Philpott retrospective permission to continue their proceedings against Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, which has been in special liquidation since 2013. He also struck out their case against KPMG for inordinate and inexcusable delay.
The proceedings were issued in September 2015 but no statement of claim was ever delivered. The plaintiffs took no further procedural step until August 2024, when they sought declarations concerning lands in Buttevant and the status of loans originally advanced by Irish Nationwide Building Society in 1990 and 1994.
The dispute centred in part on an August 2012 IBRC letter stating that all loans over the property had been repaid. IBRC said that statement was an error and clarified within days that money remained due on the first loan. That debt was later sold to Shoreline Residential Limited.
The plaintiffs revived correspondence after Pepper Finance, acting for Shoreline, demanded payment and moved to appoint a receiver in 2024. The judge found the inference that the old proceedings had been revived because of Pepper’s actions was “irresistible”.
IBRC argued that court permission was required under section 6 of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Act 2013 before proceedings could be maintained against it. Mr Justice Gillane accepted that retrospective permission was legally possible, but said the plaintiffs had not even crossed the low threshold of identifying a stateable case.
He also applied the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Kirwan v Connors on litigation delay. The nearly nine-year period of complete inactivity was well beyond the five-year point at which dismissal should generally follow unless exceptional circumstances exist.
The court refused leave against IBRC, struck out the KPMG proceedings, refused to add the proposed State defendants and struck out the plaintiffs’ remaining 2024 motion.