Galway Lotto winner has blown his €3.3m fortune

Date Published: 21-Mar-2013

BY DEARBHLA GERAGHTY

A €3.3 million lottery winner, who acted as a guarantor for an unpaid loan with Ulster Bank, claimed that he could only afford to repay €50 per month, Galway District Court heard yesterday.

In making an instalment order against the defendant, Judge Mary Fahy said that Cormac Handy of Rockbarton, Salthill was still enjoying luxuries that many others had been forced to cut out in the current economic climate.

“There might be some of that lottery money hanging around – he can appeal this if he wants,” she said. Ulster Bank Ireland Ltd, with registered offices at George’s Quay, Dublin 2, had sought to have enforced an order made against Handy in the Circuit Court on August 30 last year.

The GMIT lecturer was required to pay back a total sum of €14,371 – which consisted of the debt of €13,507, €624 in costs and expenses, and interest on the lot, at a rate of 8% p/a.

The creditors were seeking payments of €400 per month, but he said he could only afford €50.

Sean Acton, solicitor for Ulster Bank, asked Handy if it was true that he was a former lottery winner.

The debtor confirmed this, and the court heard that he had won €3.3 million in 2001. When asked to explain where all that money had gone, Handy told the solicitor that €1.5 million was “lost in stocks and shares” and that he had lost more money when he went into the construction business with his brother.

He told the court that, up to recently, he had been paying €1,900 interest-only on his mortgage, but that these repayments had now gone up to the full amount of €4,500 per month.

“When you won €3.3m, you didn’t think of paying off your mortgage?” Judge Fahy asked.

Judge Fahy told Handy that she was being “generous” in making an instalment order against him for €250 per month.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.