Serried regiments of corporate lawyers are part of a colourful cast at the Four Courts

IT’S PROVING to be quite a party down the rabbit hole known as the Four Courts.

The guest list includes six learned judges (so far) spread across 12 days (so far) of ruinously expensive hearings; a company called Zoe whose directors include one pony-tailed wunderkind who appears to have been financial director of 100 companies at the tender age of 25 or so, and which comes bristling with euphemisms for words like “solvency” and “information”, none of which bear any relationship to your average mortgage-holder’s definition.

Then there’s the one ill-mannered lender, ACCBank, which turned up at the party at the last minute, lorried out the tarts and now wants them all back – now! now! – before the tail has even been pinned on the donkey; all ably abetted by serried regiments of hyperventilating corporate lawyers, some representing small tradesmen in terror of seeing Zoe go belly-up, but mainly banks and more banks.

Just to illustrate one element of life down this rabbit hole, let’s take the Zoe development on the North Wall known as the new headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank (ie the bank of you and me). This is to be finished out by money loaned to Zoe by Anglo Irish, in the belief (presumably) that Zoe will eventually pay it back even though Zoe is actually insolvent.

Now imagine your average mortgage-holder trying to spin that one around the local bank manager. Then again, if the mortgage-holder had the option of being “Nama’d” ( a new verb we were delighted to learn yesterday), the bank manager would no doubt be a good deal more receptive.

One of the charms of yesterday’s hearing in the august surroundings of High Court number one was to hear ACCBank’s counsel, Lyndon MacCann, reverently cite the dire projections of the boom’s Cassandra, Prof Morgan Kelly, to support its contention that an examinership for the seven Zoe companies in contention would be “simply a deferred receivership”.

The open goal was too much for Zoe’s counsel, Bill Shipsey, who noted mischievously that the same bank “clearly” can’t have been paying much attention to Prof Kelly’s pronouncements as recently as late August 2007 and January 2008 when it was filling Zoe companies’ boots with over €120 million.

As if all that wasn’t thrilling enough, along comes the party host, Mr Justice Frank Clarke, to engineer a proper psycho-drama. At 4pm, with only 20 minutes or so of Mr Shipsey’s responses left to air, the judge announced he had to run. As a man of exceeding courage, already saddled with one of the thorniest judicial/political/economic decisions in the State’s history, he has also elected to chair the Lisbon Treaty referendum commission. Which is why the next Zoe episode had been adjourned until Monday.

And because this is an uncharted rabbit hole and his decision, he anticipates, will almost certainly be appealed, he will then spend seven – yes, seven – long days preparing his decision, very slowly, very, very carefully, in writing. Which – by an amazing coincidence – will bring us right up to a nail-biting day or so before Brian Lenihan, the Minister for Finance, unveils his grand Nama plan.

What will the judge do? Will Zoe be Nama’d just in time? Don’t go away . . .