A taxi driver has told a judge how he and his partner cheated the State so that they could buy their own home.
John Dowling, Griffith Road, Finglas, Dublin, said he held down a job as a truck driver while drawing the dole.
At the same time his live-in partner, Rita Proudfoot, a mother of two, had claimed the single-parent allowance.
"I was never out of work," Dowling told Mr Justice Esmond Smyth in the Circuit Civil Court. "I'm a fitter by trade and when I was made redundant in 1982, I started collecting the labour at the same time I was working as a truck driver. My partner claimed the single-parent allowance."
Mr Dowling's frank admissions under oath prompted Judge Smyth to remark that he should be alerted to his rights.
"I am not here to judge him in any way but I am aware of an incident when an admission made in court was used against someone who had not been alerted about their rights," the judge said.
Mr Dowling and Ms Proudfoot claim they bought the house from his brother, Paul Dowling, and his wife, Gemma, after they had emigrated. It had never been transferred into his name because of marital/relationship problems.
He told his counsel, Conor Bowman, that the deal had been made for £5,000 plus taking over the Dublin Corporation mortgage outstanding on the property.
From 1985 he had paid off the £5,000 in 13 monthly payments of £400. At the same time he continued paying the mortgage, which amounted to about £560 a month. Thereafter he had just maintained the mortgage repayments.
Paul Dowling, now of Ballygall Road, Dublin, and Gemma Dowling, now living in Sligo, have since separated. They claim the house was never sold to John Dowling and told the court it had been rented to him.
It was when Conor Kearney, counsel for Paul and Gemma Dowling, questioned John Dowling's ability to have paid so much out of a truck driver's wage of £220 a week and kept his partner and both their families, amounting to four children, that Mr Dowling spoke openly of the household income.
Judge Smyth has reserved his judgment.