Wheeling and dealing may have occurred during the cash purchase in England in 1999 of a 20-ton digger by a Dublin waste-recycling company, a judge said in the Circuit Civil Court yesterday.
But Judge Katherine Delahunt held it was not a matter for the courts in Ireland to deal with when she directed that Quinn Direct Insurance pay out just over €25,000 compensation for the digger which had gone on fire at a recycling site.
Mr Séamus McCaul, of McCaul Murphy Services Ltd, said he had been "continually fobbed off" and "sent round in circles" by Quinn Direct Insurance staff when he sought compensation for the burned-out digger.
Mr McCaul said Quinn Direct had kept raising questions about a receipt for the machine which he had bought for £24,000 cash in England in 1999 and insured along with more than £200,000 worth of other machinery.
He told his counsel, Mr Tony Hunt, that the digger had been used by his company to separate waste at his recycling yard at Sandyhills, St Margaret's, Dublin, and had gone on fire on the site.
Mr McCaul, who said he lived in Lusk, Co Dublin, told Judge Delahunt he had borrowed the £24,000 from his father-in-law in England, Mr Michael Verrechia, and had paid him back over two years. He had only an invoice for the price of the digger and did not have a receipt.
Mr Micheál Ó Scanaill, counsel for Quinn Direct, told the court the company had questioned the ownership of the digger.
Judge Delahunt said a private investigator had been employed by Quinn Direct to investigate the transactions in England outlined by Mr McCaul.
She said she believed that the description of the transaction in England by Mr McCaul happened as he had outlined to the court. The court had not been made aware that any third party had laid claim to the digger.