Breaffy land dispute to go to High Court

Breaffy land dispute to go to High Court


Judge rules in favour of woman left 19.5 acres in will

A legal battle over 19.5 acres of land at Greeve, Breaffy, Castlebar is to go to the High Court after the losing party to last week’s case at Castlebar Circuit Civil Court indicated immediately he would appeal the ruling.
Robert Hennelly of Greeve, Breaffy, Castlebar will appeal next May the verdict of Judge Patrick Moran to award title of ownership of the lands for the 19.5 acres to Nancy Fahey of The Curragh, Castlebar.
The case centres around lands owned by the late Annie May Foy at Greeve. The court heard that Ms Foy, a single woman, left her home and lands at Greeve in 1962 when she inherited lands some five miles away at Carn, Breaffy. The case made by counsel for Ms Fahey is that Ms Foy rented the lands to the late Paddy Hennelly, father of Robert, but had never relinquished control of the lands.
Counsel for Mr Hennelly contended that Ms Foy had gifted or abandoned the lands to the Hennellys, who had greatly improved the quality of the land in question over the years. They claimed a right to ownership under adverse possession.

Adverse possession
Ms Foy died on August 28, 2005 and Diarmuid Connolly, barrister for Nancy Fahey, instructed by Tom Walsh, made the case that during Ms Foy’s and Paddy Hennelly’s (father of Robert) lifetimes there was an arrangement in place between them with regards to these lands and as there was permission from Ms Foy for the Hennellys to use the land, the Hennellys cannot claim adverse possession, the equivalent of squatter’s rights, as this can only manifest itself if there is no permission from the landowner for the occupier to be there.
Mr Alan O’Brien from the Department of Agriculture told the court that Robert Hennelly had claimed for Single Farm Payments up until and including 2008 and that some of the applications had him listed as renting the Foy lands. Mr Hennelly argued this was merely a clerical error.
Mr O’Brien said there was a double claim for the SFP on these lands in 2008 by Mr Hennelly and from Paul Fahey, son of Nancy Fahey, who was registered as owner in October, 2007. Mr O’Brien said no one had been paid any SFPs for the lands since 2008, since the dispute began.
Paul Fahey told the court that his understanding was that the lands at question had been previously rented by Paddy Hennelly from Annie Foy and that he agreed to rent them from his mother.
Mr Fahey told the court that matters came to a head in 2008. He said he went down to the lands in question and stocked them with his cattle and put locks on the gates. He claimed that Mr Hennelly came along and chased him around the field with his jeep. Mr Fahey said he had three of his young sons with him at the time.
Eoin Garavan, barrister for Robert Hennelly, instructed by Kevin Bourke, asked Mr Fahey if Mr Hennelly knew the gates were going to be locked. “I don’t see why I’d have to inform him I was putting locks on my mother’s lands,” he replied.
‘Unrecognisable’ lands
Robert Hennelly told the court that he started farming with his father at the age of 12 in 1964, two years after Annie Foy had left Greeve. He told the court that while Annie Foy was his Godmother, she never returned to Greeve once she left and he only saw her once more, when he went into her in the Sacred Heart Home in 2002 to tell her that his father had died. He said his father and his aunt would have visited Ms Foy on a regular basis and that they ‘looked out’ for her.
He said that the Foy lands were ‘not of great quality’ when she left with only ‘about four acres’ of arable land in it but he had developed the lands, spent ‘between €40,000 and €50,000 in today’s money’ on them and that they were now ‘unrecognisable’ from how they were in 1962. He told the court that the lands were central to his 135 acre farm.
He said the issue of ownership of the lands ‘never bothered’ him until recent years. He said he had never been asked about rent for the Foy lands and never paid rent for them. He said he didn’t believe that Annie Foy would want ‘anyone but us to have the land’.
Mr Hennelly added that Paul Fahey’s claim that he drove at him with his jeep was ‘total and absolute nonsense’ and that his son, Robert Jnr, could give evidence to that effect. He said he told Mr Fahey that he had no right to be there and he had no right to the land. He claimed that Mr Fahey said ‘go home and take your heart tablets because you won’t be long around’.
He said he cut the locks on the gates, and moved Mr Fahey’s stock into a slatted house. The court heard that Mr Fahey called the gardaí who asked Mr Hennelly would he interfere with the removal of Mr Fahey’s cattle. He said he wouldn’t and Mr Fahey removed the cattle.
Mr Hennelly said that Ms Foy either gave the land or abandoned the land. He said he knew nothing of any rental agreement and said his father would have told him if such an agreement was in place.
Diarmuid Connolly put it to Mr Hennelly that it ‘beggars belief that ye never sought to regularise the lands’.
Mr Hennelly said he had never considered it an issue and had always considered the Foy lands as theirs.
He said that the first he heard of any issue was in 2002, shortly after his father died, when solicitor SeΡn Foy, who is his brother-in-law, rang him to say Eanya Egan (solicitor for Ms Foy) had rang Mr Foy regarding Ms Foy’s (no relation) land at Greeve rented to the Hennellys.
He said his father would have told him if he received any correspondence about rented lands and disputed Ms Egan’s assertion that Paddy Hennelly had called into Ms Egan about correspondence seeking rent arrears to say that he owed no rent.
“Something is seriously wrong. Saying my father said he paid rent is as obnoxious as saying I drove around after a man with kids in my jeep,” said Mr Hennelly. He said if his father was going to see a solicitor, he would have told him. He said that ‘to suggest he was paying rent behind my back is untrue and false … There are no secrets in our house’.
Mr Hennelly claimed that in 2002 someone knew that ‘we’d be here today’. When asked by Judge Moran to develop this, Mr Hennelly said: ‘Why, after forty years, would Eanya Egan write to my father? Ms Foy had 40 years to make contact’.

Will
The court heard that Ms Foy’s will was made in the Fahey house at The Curragh on 21/2/1999 while she was staying with the Faheys for a short time after being released from Mayo General Hospital. Ms Egan gave evidence that it was a perfectly sound will.  
Under questioning, Ms Egan said Ms Foy was fully capable of making a will and was satisfied she had done so of her own accord.
Ms Egan said she was ‘put out’ by the suggestion from Robert Hennelly that she was a liar about his father’s visit, saying that she takes her oath very seriously.
Paddy Connor told the court that he was, for a time, Annie Foy’s next of kin as he brought ‘Meals on Wheels’ to her every Saturday for 13 years at Carn and visited her in the Sacred Heart Home for a number of years after this.
He described Ms Foy as a ‘very withdrawn’ person who lived a ‘sheltered’ life and conditions in her house were akin to the 1900s with no electricity or running water. He said that while he knew of her renting lands at Carn, she never mentioned the lands at Greeve even though they had a discussion about her will, during which she said the lands at Carn were ‘for the people in the north’, her second cousins.
He said he was called at one stage to the Sacred Heart as next of kin and subsequently found out the Faheys were made next of kin which he told the court ‘surprised’ him as he said he didn’t feel they had any huge involvement in her life. The court heard that Willie Fahey, the late husband of Nancy Fahey, was a third cousin of Annie Foy.
Ruling in favour of the Faheys, Judge Moran said he found it difficult to accept anyone in Ireland in 1962 would abandon land and said he thinks what happened is Ms Foy allowed Paddy Hennelly to use the lands in her absence but she gave ‘very clear instructions’ to Ms Egan in 1999 about her will and what to do with these lands.
He ruled that Mr Robert Hennelly has ‘no right of title or interest in the property’ and ordered his stock to be removed from the lands. Mr Garavan said that there had been trouble before in this case and asked Judge Moran to put a stay on the court order until after the High Court appeal, likely to be in May. Judge Moran granted the stay on the basis that Mr Hennelly meets the costs of the Circuit Court case.