New Irish Bill Remedies Start Mortgages Judgment

The Irish Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence, Alan Shatter has recently published the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Bill 2013. It confirms that certain statutory provisions that were repealed by the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2009 (the "2009 Act") will – as intended by the Irish Government when that legislation was passed – continue to apply to mortgages created before the entry into force of the 2009 Act i.e. mortgages created before 1 December 2009. 

Start Mortgages case

The background to the legislation is a well-known case, Start Mortgages Ltd & Ors v Gunn & Ors [2011] IEHC 275 ("Start Mortgages"), in which the High Court found that the repeal of certain provisions in the 2009 Act may have had the unintended consequence in certain cases of restricting lending institutions from asserting their repossession rights. That High Court judgment is currently under appeal to the Supreme Court.