This article is from page 8 of the 2011-01-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 8 JPG
FEWER debt judgments were served in Clare courts than in almost any other county in Ireland in 2010. A county-by-county breakdown of debt judgments obtained in Irish courts in 2010 has revealed that the Banner was one of Ireland’s three least indebted counties.
Clare finished second only to Kilkenny in the list of court judgments per head of population over the last 12 months with counties Mayo and Donegal also recording low levels of debt.
According to the figures the most indebted county in Ireland was Cavan, while counties Cork, Limerick, Laois and Sligo also recorded high debt levels.
This information was compiled by Dublin-based financial research company BusinessPro.
In a separate survey from earlier this year, BusinessPro also showed that the average debt of Clare people rose from € 6,159 in 2003 to € 20,596 last year – one of the highest levels of debt per person of any county in Ireland.
This would indicate that there are still large levels of personal debt in Clare which is not being seen yet in the amount of debt judgments coming through the local courts.
According to the whose managing director of BusinessPro, James Treacy, the situation is likely to get worse in 2011.
“We estimate an additional € 2 billion of non commercial debt coming down the line next year,” he said last week.
“Most of the consumer debt has yet to hit the courts, but with the end of the one-year moratorium for homeowners and other factors such as the proposed changes to our bankruptcy regime, we expect to see a huge surge in personal insolvencies connected with consumer debt,” he added.
The last 12 months saw the largest ever number of individual and corporate judgments registered in one year in the Irish courts.
While Clare courts dealt with fewer cases per capita that almost every other county in Ireland, the largest single corporate judgment was obtained against Donatex, the company used by Lisdoonvarna developer Bernard McNamara to invest in the Irish Glass Bottle Site in Dublin.
A judgment of more than € 62 million was also obtained against Bernard McNamara personally, arising from the € 412 million purchase of the former toxic dump in 2006 by a consortium of investors.