‘Free lunch is over’: family in battle with fund
A WOMAN is locked in a legal battle with a fund that wants the family to leave a property they do not own, but consider to be their family home.
She wants to buy the six-bedroom property on Phibsboro Road in Dublin and is prepared to pay the “market rate” of €475,000 for it, but says Havbell Designated Activity Company is refusing to engage with her.
The fund’s “illogical and bizarre” behaviour was the reason her 74-year-old husband suffered a stroke immediately after an earlier court hearing, she believed.
Maria, otherwise Mariah, Isabel Dias, otherwise Harvey, is opposing the fund’s bid for High Court orders requiring herself and her husband, plus their son and his partner, to leave the property.
Anthony Thuillier, for Havbell, said it claims Ms Dias and members of her family have enjoyed the house rent-free over some three years. Mr Thuillier said the fund acquired a €2.3m loan by PTSB to former owner, John Rooney, of Windermere, Myrtleville, Crosshaven, Co Cork, which was charged on the Phibsboro property.
Ms Dias and her family are “trespassers” who had paid just one month’s rent since 2015, he said. The fund claims a language school previously operated at the premises but went into liquidation and Mr Rooney appeared to replace that school as a tenant with Ms Dias who had carried out some window repairs in lieu of rent.
Counsel said the “free lunch is over” and it is entitled to vacant possession. The fund also believes the property was offered for rent on the Airbnb website and Ms Dias profited from that, he added.
Ms Dias disputed this, and said three young women from France, Italy and Mexico were guests of the family – and friends of her son Marvin, an FAI “champion” who also played soccer for Costa Rica.
She said in affidavits she entered tenancy agreements from 2014 with the original owner Mr Rooney, paid rent to him for 13 months and offered to pay rent to the fund but it refused her offer. She also claims she had an option under agreements to buy the property for €350,000.
Her counsel Vincent P Martin urged Ms Justice Caroline Costello not to grant the injunctions requiring the family to leave. His clients were “innocent victims”, he said.
Ms Justice Costello reserved judgment.