A “highly vulnerable” and elderly Co Galway woman had been unduly influenced to withdraw €124,000 of her life savings and hand it over to a couple who had befriended her, the High Court heard this week.
Eighty-year-old Mary Bourke of Portumna Retirement Village, Portumna, Co Galway, who is a widow with no children, had suffered ill health for many years and had entrusted and paid her neighbours to do messages for her while she lived at the home with her late brother. However Ms Bourke claimed that the couple, George and Pauline O’Donnell with an address at Shannon Park, Portumna, had influenced her into making the transaction at a local Bank of Ireland branch knowing that she was frail, ill, confused, and of advanced years. The claim was denied by the couple.
At the High Court on Tuesday Mr Justice John Hedigan heard evidence that on December 6, 2007, the couple signed Ms Bourke out of the nursing home and brought her to the bank in Portumna where it was arranged that the couple would be given €124,000. The money was the proceeds of an insurance policy which Ms Bourke had received only three weeks earlier.
In giving judgment Mr Justice Hedigan said that the presumption that the O’Donnells had used undue influence on Ms Bourke, who is a “highly vulnerable, elderly lady”, had not been rebutted as the couple had chosen not to give any evidence. The couple were then ordered to repay €124,000 to Ms Bourke.
Mr Justice Hedigan added that the transaction itself was “wholly improvident” in that Ms Bourke was “divesting herself of a large bulk of her assets for no return whatever”. He accepted that the Bank of Ireland had no duty to advise a customer on the wisdom of carrying through with her wishes and instructions, however, the circumstances should have raised substantial doubt for the bank. He ruled that the bank had breached its duty to enquire into Ms Bourke’s capacity where substantial grounds to doubt existed.
