Woman wins right to enter PIA over mortgage debt

A mother of two has won an appeal over a financial institution’s objection to her entering a personal insolvency arrangement to pay off a €220,000 debt on a house she and her husband bought in 2007 for €300,000.

The woman, who has since informally separated from her husband, engaged the services of an unaccredited insolvency agency called Money Bloom which, she said, told her in 2014 that an agreement had been reached with the lending institution to restructure her debt.

This turned out not to be the case and the founder of Money Bloom was later convicted of fraud in relation to a separate matter, the High Court heard.