Firms write off €600m bad debts
The company’s survey of court judgments over the last five years reveals that €600m in registered and unregistered judgments have been processed by the Irish Courts since 1999.
The Revenue Commissioners are the top plaintiffs in Ireland and have been awarded judgments totaling €137m. The biggest user of the courts is Bank of Ireland who won judgments against 10,444 customers for debts totaling €57m.
Credit Union are the second biggest users of the court endeavouring to force clients to pay monies owed. Credit Unions brought 8,327 people to court and were awarded €49m in judgments. Other top 20 court users include AIB, Eircom, Ulster Bank, Independent Newspapers, Everyday Finance and the ESB.
BusinessPro distributes Stubbs Gazette in Ireland and publishes judgments on the internet site.
BusinessPro managing director James Treacy explains that a judgment is granted to a plaintiff who takes a successful case against an individual or company that owes them money.
“About 70% of judgments are not registered by plaintiffs and they account for over 70,000 cases totaling €351 million since 1999. Registered judgments in the same period accounted for over 21,000 cases totaling €276 million. BusinessPro are the only company in Ireland to publish the unregistered judgments,” he said.
Mr Treacy said that traditionally registering a judgment had a greater detrimental effect on a defendant’s ability to secure future credit from financial institutions or businesses, with the judgment appearing in Stubbs Gazette. But since all judgments are now published the effect of registering the judgment is diminishing. “Bad debts are becoming less and less of a problem as word gets around that all judgments are now published. A lot of defaulters knew that their details were unlikely to be published and never settled their debts as a result.”
