O’Donnell’s reason for UK move ‘entirely irrelevant’

A judge’s view that solicitor Brian O’Donnell moved to England to secure a "benign bankruptcy" and avoid his creditors is "entirely irrelevant" to whether he should have been adjudicated bankrupt here, his lawyer has told the Supreme Court.

The five-judge court yesterday began hearing an appeal by Mr O’Donnell and his wife, Dr Mary Patricia O’Donnell, against being adjudicated bankrupts here over failure to repay a €70m judgment. Arising from various matters raised, Chief Justice Susan Denham said the court was adjourning the appeal to later in the year to allow the sides address those matters in additional submissions.

Bank of Ireland obtained the €70m judgment against the couple in late 2011 arising from unpaid loans made for property investments. The O’Donnells in March 2012 applied for bankruptcy in the UK, but the bank successfully opposed that and, in June 2012, brought its own petition to have the couple adjudicated bankrupt in Ireland.