‘Cleaner to the stars’ agrees deal with solicitor over €100k debt

Gina Farrell, the self-styled ‘cleaner to the stars’ who fled her solicitor’s office after grabbing the deeds of an apartment she owns, has reached agreement with her former solicitor over a €100,000 debt.

Roughan Banim, counsel for solicitor Brian O’Brien, told Mr Justice Henry Abbott in the High Court yesterday that she had renewed an undertaking to pay the money to Mr O’Brien, who represented her in a case involving developer Sean Dunne.

Mr Banim said an interim injunction had been obtained last week restraining Farrell and her husband, Michael, from reducing their assets below €175,000 or selling the apartment in St Raphael’s Manor, Celbridge, Co Kildare.

The court had been told Farrell and her husband, along with an unidentified man, had gone to the offices of her then solicitor, Enda P Moran, in Celbridge on the pretext that she needed to check the deeds. She then ran off with them.

A locum solicitor who tried to stop them and recover the deeds had been “pushed aside”.

The court heard that Enda P Moran solicitors had previously given an undertaking to Brian O’Brien, to whom Farrell allegedly owed a legal costs debt of €158,471, that a settlement figure of €100,000 would be paid to his legal firm directly from the sale of the apartment.

Mr O’Brien had represented Farrell, trading as Gina Farrell Cleaning Services, in a 17-day High Court case in which developer Sean Dunne was awarded €22,500 on the basis she had overcharged him, between 2003 and 2006, for cleaning services at an apartment complex his company, Hollybrook (Brighton Rd) Management, owned in Foxrock, Co Dublin.

Initially a legal costs and Vat bill of €263,470 was reduced to a balance of €158,471 on payment by Farrell of €105,000. This figure had later been reduced, in settlement talks, to €100,000 which had still not been paid.

The court heard that last July, Farrell’s apartment had gone “sale agreed” for €208,000.

On August 21, the Farrells, with the unidentified man, visited Enda P Moran’s office on the pretext they needed to check something in the deeds on the instructions of Bank of Ireland to see if they could obtain a loan from the bank.

When a locum solicitor presented the deeds on her desk Gina Farrell “grabbed them and proceeded with her husband and the other man to flee from the office”, the court was told. The locum solicitor attempted to take back the deeds but was “pushed aside”.

The locum later made a phone call to Mr O’Brien’s office stating that the €100,000 undertaking regarding the proceeds of sale had been cancelled.

The court heard that Mr O’Brien, practising under the style of O’Brien Redmond Solicitors, believed Gina Farrell and her husband were conducting the sale through a third solicitor and that they intended dissipating the proceeds.

Mr Banim said that under a new agreement, Gina Farrell’s apartment could not now be sold without the consent of Mr O’Brien.

The proceedings were adjourned until October 16.