Yates’s wife asks that €1.6m judgment not be made against her

The wife of former government minister Ivan Yates is asking the High Court not to grant a bank a €1.6 million summary judgment order against her. The debt arises from a guarantee given by Deirdre Yates concerning loans made by AIB to her husband for his Celtic Bookmakers business, which went into liquidation in 2011.

Mr Yates, now a radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist, was later declared bankrupt in the UK having lived for 16 months in Wales so as to qualify under its more relaxed bankruptcy laws.

AIB claims Ms Yates was a majority shareholder, director and company secretary of the bookmakers and it is therefore entitled to recover from her €1.6 million arising from the single guarantee she signed on her husband’s debt.

Ms Yates, a primary school teacher, claims that when she signed the guarantee, she did not receive, nor was she advised to receive, legal advice about the implications of doing so. She particularly was not aware the family home in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, was at risk if there was default on the loans to her husband, she says.

AIB wants the court to grant summary judgment because it says she has no defence to the claim. She wants the matter to go to a full hearing so the court can assess all the facts surrounding the matter. Mr Justice Séamus Noonan said he would rule on Friday whether the bank was entitled to summary judgment.

Andrew Fitzpatrick, for AIB, said Ms Yates’s claim that she did not understand her liability arising out of what she signed did not stand up to scrutiny. The terms of the arrangements could not be more clearly explained and at no stage, in three separate affidavits she swore, did she explain what understanding she actually had, he said.

In relation to her claim that she did not receive any legal advice, the very first paragraph of the document she signed stated legal advice should be obtained, he said. She claimed she did not understand the nature of the documents, they were only for administrative purposes because her husband was the “principal mover in the company” and it was his assets that were at risk if there was default on the loan, Mr Fitzpatrick added.

However, she was asked to sign a guarantee as a director and shareholder, which is a normal security sought by a bank providing loan facilities for a company. She also challenged the accuracy of the figures sought by AIB because, she claimed, there were different sums sought on different occasions. She had never specifically engaged with the bank as to how it reached the figures.

The figures were different because the bank had not sought interest on the amount owed or the costs of the receivership of Celtic Bookmakers.

She also claimed the bank should first exhaust all its securities against her husband before pursuing her. The bank was entitled, under law, to seek to enforce one or more of its securities, Mr Fitzpatrick said. In doing so, it would still only be able to recover what it was entitled to, no more.

Brian Conroy, for Ms Yates, who was in court with her husband, said there should be a full hearing of all matters. Her only income was as a schoolteacher and the bank already had charges against other fixed assets provided under the guarantee, he said.

There was €825,000 available to the bank from the sale of a property, which went towards Mr Yates’s UK bankruptcy and no credit had been given by AIB for that. There was also €35,000 in legal costs, due to be paid to Mr Yates by AIB from his bankruptcy proceedings, which had not been factored in. The issue of bank charges, which were included in the amount sought, would require to be examined as part of a full hearing into the matter, Mr Conroy added.

While AIB said Ms Yates had been advised in the documents to seek legal advice, that was not the same as, for example, asking her to provide a letter from a solicitor saying she had been so advised. The bank “did not take any proper steps to encourage her to take legal advice”.

In reply, Mr Fitzpatrick for AIB said the bank had not received the €825,000 from the UK trustee in bankruptcy but would offset it against the overall debt if it did.