An application for judgment orders for more than €22 million against two Galway businessmen and a businessman from Naas has failed.
The application was brought by businessman Dermot O’Rourke of Keredern House, Naas, against the three other businessmen over their failure to repay a €10 million loan advanced to them to help buy lands at Millennium Park in Co Kildare for €315 million.
The agreement for the €10 million loan made to the three by Mr O’Rourke in 2006 provided it was repayable over three years, at 30 per cent interest per year. He claimed about €22 million was due over failure to repay it by August 2009 and he was also entitled to 32 per cent interest on the outstanding sum as of 2009.
Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan yesterday ruled Mr O’Rourke was not entitled to the judgment orders against Thomas Considine, Coast Road, Oranmore, Co Galway; Patrick Sweeney, Main Street, Loughrea, Co Galway; and Gerard Prendergast, Moortown, Naas, Co Kildare.
This was based on construction of a 2008 assignment of the loan by Mr O’Rourke to Bank of Scotland Ireland to address liabilities of his to the bank, and a purported reassignment by BOSI of same to Mr O’Rourke in 2010. She stressed her conclusion did not exempt the defendants from an obligation to repay the loan to the person entitled to the benefit of the loan agreement. That agreement must be applied in accordance with the interest terms set out in it.
The case arose from the sale in 2006 of lands at Millennium Park by Mr O’Rourke and developer Gerry Conlan to the defendants. Mr O’Rourke alleged that, in an agreement of August 2006, he agreed to provide the defendants with a loan of €10 million for use in buying Millennium Park lands.
