A 49-year-old waitress has told a judge that since winning a €200,000 interest in the home she shared with her former partner she has been hit with a bill for €80,000 from the State for wrongly obtained lone parent and rent allowance payments.
"What I did was very wrong and I am in negotiations and in the process of paying that back," Marian Flood, of Magennis Square, Pearse Street, Dublin, told Mr Justice de Valera in the High Court yesterday.
When questioned about rent assistance and lone parent payments she had received in respect of an address other than the home she claimed to have a half interest in, Ms Flood said she had been served with a bill for €80,000, all of which had to be paid back.
Ms Flood yesterday won an appeal to the High Court made by her ex-partner, Eugene Rosatta, who still lives in the house the couple shared at Abbey Drive, Navan Road, Dublin.
She told the court her name had not appeared on the deeds of the house because she had been receiving a lone parent allowance in relation to the couple's only child, now 22. She said she had left Mr Rosatta on at least 10 occasions and had lived at various addresses. She had not given up rent assistance obtained in relation to one of these addresses after moving back in with him.
Mr Justice de Valera said he considered that Judge Alison Lindsay in the Circuit Court had got the matter exactly right when she awarded Ms Flood half the equity in the €390,000 house.
He said he would award all of the legal costs in both courts against Mr Rosatta. There had been a conflict of evidence about the contributions made by both parties and the court could not base its decision on specific calculations but rather on a general view, he said.
He preferred the evidence of Ms Flood to that of Mr Rosatta and granted orders directing the sale of the house at Abbey Drive.