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Courts

Master of the High Court calls for debt forgiveness

A senior administrator of the courts system complains that banks are too aggressive in pursuing their loans.

THE MASTER of the High Court has attacked the country’s banks for their aggressive pursuit of debts from people who obviously do not have the means to pay them – and called for the banks to forgive some of their borrowings.

Presiding over a number of cases yesterday, Edmund Honohan said the pursuit of some loans as part of an accountancy exercise to write off the debts against tax was driving some people to suicide.

Existing laws provided struggling debtors with some difficulty, RTÉ reports Honohan as saying, and banks should not expect to ‘have it their own way’.

In transactions where a bank was realistically part of a joint venture, the bank should be forced to share the losses it had earned.

The Master of the High Court exercises limited court functions, reducing the workload of the court’s judges within certain parameters.

Read more on Honohan’s comments at RTÉ News >

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