€750,000 damages awarded to Sligo family of murdered victim
Terence Madden above left (52), a father of three, bled to death on January 28th, 1999. Margaret Madden and her daughter centre pic. after the high court hearing yesterday. Michael Doohan right pic. who is serving a life sentance for the murder.
In an unprecedented court ruling, the family of a man “ruthlessly and gratuitously” gunned down outside his home has been awarded about €750,000 damages by the High Court.
Most of the award, some €720,000, will go to Margaret Madden whose husband Terence Madden (52), a father of three, bled to death after an artery in his leg was severed when he was shot twice in the early morning ambush outside his home in Ballaghaderreen, Co Sligo, on January 28th, 1999.
Ms Madden, Lough Gara View House, Monasteraden, Ballaghaderreen, Co Sligo, had sued the four men involved in the incident in what is believed to be the first action of its kind where damages were sought by the family of the victim of a contract killing.
In her judgment yesterday, Ms Justice Mary Irvine said it was hard to imagine the trauma Ms Madden must have felt when, after hearing a loud noise and running downstairs, she found her husband lying on the ground covered in blood.
Ms Madden had suffered a heart attack, was in hospital for seven days and was in a terrible state of shock when discharged for her husband’s funeral, the judge said.
She later suffered sleep deprivation, flashbacks and nightmares.
Ms Madden’s recovery, the judge added, might have been different if she did not have to live at the scene of the murder. Ms Madden also had to witness the Garda restaging of the incident as gardaí were initially at a complete loss in relation to the killing.
Granting €550,000 for the loss of income as a result of the death of her husband and €150,000 for nervous shock, Ms Justice Irvine said it was “hopelessly unrealistic” to think Ms Madden will fully recover psychologically. She should be enjoying a life with her husband who was taken from her prematurely by the “senseless and ruthless actions” of the four men, the judge said.
The damages award was made against all four defendants who had not defended the action.
Michael Doohan is serving life for the murder. He later claimed he had ordered a punishment-style beating for Mr Madden and had asked that he be crippled with his legs and arms broken.
Doohan, a soldier at the time, claimed he told the attacker to stay away from Mr Madden’s head; €600 was paid upfront and a further €900 was to be paid after the attack, his trial heard.
The court heard the attack arose out of the resentment of Doohan, formerly of Ashbury Lawns, Ballinode, Co Sligo, over the Maddens’ operating a bed and breakfast near another BB operated by Doohan’s mother.
There was also a grudge in relation to Mr Madden offering his sympathies at the funeral of Doohan’s father.
The case was also against Michael Joseph Herron of Chapel Street, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, and Patrick McGrath of Cuilpruglish, Gurteen, Co Sligo, who are both also serving life sentences for the murder.
Thomas Derrig, Culfadda, Ballymote, Co Sligo, a further defendant, died two years ago and the award is against the representatives of his estate. Derrig had pleaded guilty to having a sawn-off shotgun in suspicious circumstances in October 1998, the gun used in the murder, and received a suspended sentence.
It was claimed Ms Madden had been unable to run her BB after her husband’s death and suffered personal injuries, nervous shock and loss arising from the murder.
The damages award includes €1,250 to each of Mr Madden’s three brothers and a sister and a further €5,000 each to Ms Madden and her three children. An additional €17,000 was awarded to Claire Madden, who returned to live with her mother after the shooting and €17,224 was awarded in special damages.
Ms Justice Irvine said she was satisfied from the evidence Ms Madden was entitled to succeed against each of the defendants on grounds including conspiracy.
Treasury Holdings becomes Ireland’s biggest casualty of the recession
Treasury Holdings, best known for its audacious €5bn plan to develop the Battersea power station site in London, has become the biggest Irish property developer to fall victim to the country’s financial crisis.
The winding up of Treasury, following a decision by a Dublin court on Tuesday to appoint Grant Thornton as liquidators, is part of a massive shake-out of Ireland’s property development industry.
Almost 200 receivers have been appointed to debtors in the sector over the past three years, closing dozens of companies, bankrupting some of Ireland’s formerly richest men and forcing others to emigrate in search of overseas opportunities.
During the Celtic Tiger boom, 772 developers borrowed €74bn from the main Irish banks, which they ploughed into speculative property investments in Ireland, the UK and beyond. When the property bubble burst and prices slumped by up to 70 per cent in Ireland most developers were left hopelessly indebted and Dublin was forced to rescue its main Irish banks at a cost of €64bn.
There is little public sympathy for developers, who are widely blamed for pushing the country into a financial crisis that led to a €67.5bn bailout by the EU and International Monetary Fund. The ostentatious lifestyles previously enjoyed by developers, and covered extensively in Irish newspapers, jars with the recent reality of cutbacks to public services and tax increases.
Treasury, co-owned by flamboyant Irish businessman Johnny Ronan and his partner Richard Barrett, was probably the developer most associated with Celtic Tiger bling. Mr Ronan became front-page news when he travelled to Morocco on a private jet with former Miss World Rosanna Davison on a spur of a moment holiday during the height of the Irish financial crisis.
The negative publicity generated by the incident was not welcomed by Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency, the state-owned bad bank set up to clear toxic property loans from Irish bank balance sheets. Out of Treasury’s total debts worth €2.7bn, it owes Nama about €1bn.
Nama has spent €31bn of taxpayers money buying toxic loans from banks. It has a mandate to partner with viable developers to complete development projects or enforce its security on loans and put them out of business.
“The agency’s preference is to work, wherever possible, with co-operating debtors,” a Nama spokesman told the Financial Times. “The agency typically only appoints receivers when it has become clear that it remains the only course of action to deliver the best outcome for the taxpayer.”
Treasury was finally brought down by KBC, the Belgian bank that petitioned the High Court to wind up the company over a €55m loan. But it was Treasury’s legal battles with Nama that spelt the end for a company that controlled a property empire stretching from Dublin to Shanghai.
Treasury’s dispute with Nama began when the agencyappointed receivers to Treasury’s flagship Battersea site last year sparking a succession of legal cases. Last month Nama finally decided to support KBC’s move to wind up the company when it emerged that Treasury had transferred ownership of two Chinese companies to a business owned by Mr Barrett.
Nama has rigorously pursued developers who have sought to transfer assets beyond the reach of the agency, often to their wives. Last year it negotiated the reversal of asset transfers worth €160m and charges over previously unencumbered securities worth €220m.
It has also confiscated assets, including art valued at €7.5m, by enforcing “personal guarantees” that were provided by developers during the boom in return for securing bank loans.
Developers privately nickname Nama the “national retribution agency” and say its slow bureaucratic decision-making has helped to freeze the property market. They allege it is wiping out a whole generation of Irish developers. However, few will comment publicly on Nama for fear of retribution.
The agency’s tough stance with developers and its decision to delay asset sales in Ireland is beginning to attract some criticism. The chief architect of Nama, economist Peter Bacon, who was commissioned by Dublin to design the agency, claims it is acting too much like “a debt collection agency” and not enough like an asset management agency.
He says some developers will survive the crash, although at this stage it is impossible to tell how many. “Some Irish property developers are very talented and would be competitive in any market situation. They certainly have the potential to contribute to economic revival of the sector in Ireland,” said Mr Bacon.
The HSE were sued over 27 deaths since 2006
The health service has been sued by the families of 27 patients who died since 2006 due to alleged medical negligence, new figures reveal.
The 27 fatalities were among 2,068 deaths due to different incidents, including natural causes, which were logged by hospitals under a confidential reporting system over that time.
Ciaran Breen, head of the State Claims Agency, which collects the reports and is responsible for handling claims, said an adverse incident is not always the cause of death and patients can have serious underlying conditions.
He was speaking as a new report showed 85,918 adverse events were logged into the confidential central database by staff in hospitals and other parts of the health service last year.
The State paid out €81m in compensation in 2011 arising out of legal actions linked to errors which led to patients or other users of the health service suffering harm.
Slips, trips and falls made up nearly one in three of the incidents reported in 2011 and accounted for 27,541 reported accidents, some of which can have severe effects, particularly for elderly patients.
Guidelines
Dr Philip Crowley, the Health Service Executive‘s director of quality and patient safety, spoke about the recent high profile concerns involving patients who received the wrong operations. He said an examination of guidelines for hospital staff found they were not being fully complied with.
This led to the HSE involving the Royal College of Surgeons to re-visit the guidelines and promote their use by hospital staff, to reduce the chances of errors happening.
Further statistics revealed that errors in medication made up one in 12 incidents, affecting 6,633 patients.
Donegal cannabis factory is uncovered after a big search by Gardai in Malin
The cannabis plants were discovered near Malin in Donegal.
Gardai (Irish police) have uncovered what they have described as a huge cannabis cultivation factory in County Donegal.
The find was made at a factory near Malin in the north of the county.
Two men have been arrested at the scene.
Superintendent English said the plants were at various stages of development and that a large quantity had already been harvested and was ready for market.
He said the find is very significant and an examination of the scene is on-going to determine the value of the plants.
Ireland the fifth most expensive country in the EU
Ireland is the fifth most expensive country in the EU, with consumers paying 17 per cent more than the EU average, a new Central Statistics Office report has found.
Ireland fared well in educational attainment compared with its EU partners but badly in terms of economic indicators, according to the CSO Measuring Ireland’s Progress 2011 report released today.
Only Norway, Sweden, Finland and Luxembourg had higher consumer prices than Ireland last year.
As a result of low inflation its relative expensiveness has improved since the start of the recession (2008), when it had the second highest prices in the EU (30 per cent above average) .
Ireland also came fifth highest in the EU for its unemployment rate last year. It had the highest per centage of adults living in jobless households in the EU, at 15.8 per cent compared with the EU average of 11.1 per cent.
Ireland also came seventh highest in the per centage of people out of work for more than a year. This level of long-term unemployed people was mainly due mainly due to the high number of out of work men, presumably many former construction workers.
The productivity of the Irish workforce (GDP per person employed) was above the EU average, the report found. Ireland’s GDP per capita was the fourth highest in the EU at 27 per cent above average.
Not surprisingly the State’s public finances fared very badly in comparison with other EU nations.
Ireland had the worst public balance deficit- the difference between Government borrowing and lending in the EU last year. It was by far the highest in the EU at 13.1 per cent which was far worse than other troubled EU states of Greece (9.1) and Spain (8.5) and well above the EU average of 4.1 per cent.
However Ireland did fare well in terms of educational achievements with the third highest level of third level completion in the EU (46 per cent of population 25-34 completed third level).
It also had a higher than average level of people who at least achieved lower second level education (13.5 per cent compared with EU average of 10.6 per cent) .
Ireland’s population was the fastest growing in the EU over the past decade, with the highest per centage increase at 16.91 per cent, far above the EU average increase of 3.86 per cent.
Eight EU states saw a decline in population over the past decade.
Ireland had the highest proportion of young people (aged 0-14) in the EU with France and Denmark the next highest. However it had last year but the second lowest proportion of older people (over 65) in the EU last year with only Slovakia having less older people.
This combination lead to an age dependency ratio (a measure of pressure on the economically productive population) which was about EU average.
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