Judge criticises Master of High Court for dismissing bank's repossession case before it reached court

The Master of the High Court, who last week had debt cases removed from his workload, has been criticised by a judge over his decision to dismiss a bank's application to repossess a property.

Mr Justice Garrett Simons said "it beggars belief" that the Master, Edmund Honohan, continued to make orders striking out special summonses such as the one brought by Permanent TSB against Geoffrey Carr over the repossession of land and a house at Carney Commons, Carney, Co Tipperary.

"This course of conduct on the part of the Master simply serves to increase legal costs unnecessarily and to cause delay", Mr Justice Simons said in a High Court judgment today.

It had "no practical benefit whatsoever" and the Master's order may, in some instances, give defendants a false sense of hope, he said.

Those defendants may mistakenly think there had been a lawful adjudication on the merits of their case and that it had been resolved in their favour.

"In truth, the only forum which can adjudicate upon an application for an order for possession, by way of special summons, is the High Court," he said.

The Master did not have an adjudicative function in this regard. "To state the obvious, the Master does not hold judicial office", he added.

In relation to the PTSB/Carr case, Mr Justice Simons said the possession order arose out of a mortgage taken out by Mr Carr. PTSB had brought the summons and later applied to have the Master's strike-out order overturned.

The judge said Mr Carr did not attend court or file an affidavit in this case.

While a summons server said that from local enquiries it did not appear there had been anyone living in the Carney house for some years, the judge was satisfied service of the papers on Mr Carr had been effected in accordance with a previous court order.

He discharged the Master's strike-out order of October 5 last and ordered the case be transferred back to the High Court list.

The Master, who is a court official who deals with cases on the way to trial, was last week no longer permitted to deal with debt cases by order of Mr Justice Peter Kelly, president of the High Court.