The High Court has refused a request by Agnes Ryan to extend the time for appealing a possession order over a property in Suncroft, Co Kildare. The ruling leaves the County Registrar’s February 2022 order in place; the High Court was not hearing an appeal against that order itself.
Mr Justice Heslin ruled on 12 December 2023 that the application failed. Start Mortgages Limited had obtained the possession order against Michael Ryan and Agnes Ryan on 21 February 2022. The second defendant’s application was to extend the deadline to appeal it, which was 10 days.
The judge accepted for the purpose of the application that Agnes Ryan had formed a bona fide intention to appeal within the permitted time. But he found she had not shown a qualifying mistake to explain why no appeal was filed. Her affidavits said she had relied on advice from a person she knew was not a lawyer, who had told her an appeal would be filed. Her solicitors discovered in April 2022 that no appeal had been lodged.
The court also found the later delay unexplained. Ryan said she learned of the possession order by late February 2022, and that by 28 April she knew no appeal had been filed. The extension application was issued on 14 July. The judge said the general account of obtaining documents and trying to secure counsel did not explain why the application could not have been brought earlier.
Ryan advanced grounds including that she had been deprived of an opportunity to defend the possession claim, that the property was inadequately identified without a map, and that Start Mortgages had not shown it succeeded to the bank’s interest. The judge rejected those grounds as unstateable at this stage. He pointed to the property description in the mortgage and conveyance documents, and to evidence linking the loan account to the assignment. He also found service had been made by prepaid post under a court order authorising that method.
The judge noted that Ryan had attended a 2021 hearing, where the County Registrar ordered monthly payments of €1,500 as a condition of adjournment, but that the possession hearing proceeded in February 2022 without an appearance for the defendants. The possession order granted Start Mortgages possession, with an eight-month stay and a permanent stay conditional on monthly payments of €2,850. The High Court’s decision concerned only the request to extend appeal time, which it refused.