Brian O’Donnell with his wife Mary Patricia O’Donnell. Photo: Damien Eagers
Take yourself back to the Celtic Tiger. Business is booming, properties are flying off the market at extortionate prices and anyone can afford anything with a simple bank loan. This is the environment in which Brian and Mary Patricia O’Donnell built up their mammoth property portfolio, at one point valued at over €1bn.
We’re all familiar with how this decadent era ended and the O’Donnells weren’t spared from ruin. The couple had also invested heavily in property internationally, but ended up bankrupt after values plummeted following the global financial crash in the late 2000s.
They were ordered to pay back over €70m in loans and debts to Bank of Ireland. Their Dublin home, Gorse Hill on upmarket Vico Road in Killiney, was repossessed by the bank following a much-publicised stand-off in 2015. The mansion, which overlooks the Irish Sea, was sold two years later for €9.5m.
Now, nearly a decade after the O’Donnells were ordered to leave the property, they are back in the news.
Brian and Mary Patricia O’Donnell, as well as their son Blake, have issued High Court proceedings against former official assignee in bankruptcy, Christopher Lehane.
Host Fionnán Sheahan is joined on The Indo Daily by Donal O’Donovan, business editor of the Irish Independent, and legal affairs editor Shane Phelan. They discuss the new legal dispute involving the couple at the centre of the infamous ‘Battle for Gorse Hill’.
