Settlement reached in credit union debt case

A SETTLEMENT was reached yesterday in outstanding damages and costs issues between an unemployed mother-of-two and the state over her successful constitutional challenge to the debtors’ prison laws.

Last June, Caroline McCann, 36, of Mullaghmatt, Monaghan, won a High Court test case against a one-month jail sentence imposed on her due to inability to pay arrears on a credit union loan.

Ms Justice Mary Laffoy ruled that a District Court order in November 2005, when she received the jail sentence, was unconstitutional.