A fall from grace
Her uncle was a judge and her father was a FG councillor… so this week’s jailing of solicitor Jacqueline Durcan for ripping off clients was a major shock
THE disgraced former solicitor who was jailed this week for stealing €260,000 from her clients is from a family considered to be Fine Gael royalty in Enda Kenny’s heartland of Co. Mayo.
Jacqueline Durcan pleaded guilty to the theft, which occurred at a time when she and her husband owed €6.5m to banks from ‘catastrophic’ property investments they had made during the boom.
Durcan is a niece of district court judge Patrick Durcan, who was appointed to the bench by Enda Kenny’s government in 2011.
He is a former Fine Gael senator and trustee of the party, and he was Mr Kenny’s running mate in four general elections.
Her late father, Thomas ‘Beau’ Durcan, was also a Fine Gael stalwart who served the party as a councillor for two terms on Westport Urban District Council.
The Durcan family is seen as royalty in Fine Gael circles and actively supported Mr Kenny and Michael Ring in Co. Mayo.
Both Thomas and Patrick Durcan followed their father into practice as solicitors in Castlebar and Westport. Jacqueline, 47, also joined her father’s practice when she qualified in 1994.
Patrick Durcan served as an election agent and sub-director of elections for Michael Ring and was appointed a trustee of the Fine Gael party the year after Enda Kenny became leader in 2002. A former councillor, he served alongside Mr Kenny on Mayo County Council for five years and was appointed to the Seanad by former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald in 1983. He made fawning remarks about Mr Kenny in local media in the wake of the 2011 general election, comparing him to Charles Stewart Parnell and Daniel O’Connell.
Nine months later, Mr Durcan was controversially appointed as a judge by the Fine Gael-led government amid accusations of cronyism from opposition politicians.
The 65-year-old is a member of a Catholic order called the Equestrian Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.
In 2013, he provoked criticism when he jailed a homeless woman in the District Court for four months for stealing €40 from a nun.
During the property boom, Jacqueline Durcan became involved in a number of disastrous investments in Mayo, with husband Noel Rowland.
These included the purchase of the historic Imperial Hotel in Castlebar, where the Land League was founded in 1879. Accounts for the hospitality company associated with the venture show that losses of €630,867 had accrued in its first three years in business.
The couple subsequently put the hotel up for sale but rejected a bid of €2.6m at auction in April 2008, having set a reserve price of €3m.
Two years later, the hotel was sold to Mayo County Council for less than €800,000 following the appointment of a receiver. Two other Castlebar properties and 25 acres in Westport, owned by the couple, were also placed on the market at this time.
Durcan and her husband also invested in a show horse from one of the top breeding lines as the economy boomed. This was later sold to a breeder in Cork, and went on to record nearly 40 victories in events over a seven-year career.
The former solicitor broke down in tears when the prison sentence was handed down by Judge Patricia Ryan in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. ‘I cannot go home to my children tonight,’ she said. Durcan had been struck off as a solicitor as a result of the offence and had moved to Belgium with her family where she has been teaching English as a foreign language.
Barrister Patrick Gageby SC, told the court that his client was conscious of the dishonour that she had brought to the family practice, which had been established by her grandfather in the 1920s and was ‘a very well respected practice’ in Mayo.
‘Durcans seen as royalty in Fine Gael circles’ ‘Involved in a number of disastrous investments’