MARGARET REDUCED TO TEARS ON JOE DUFFYS LIVELINE PROGRAMME
Margaret Hanrahan, of the Burncourt Equestrian Centre, captured the limelight nationally on Friday last when she broke down in tears as she told Joe Duffy of RTE Radio One of how receivers had taken over her land. Last week receivers appointed by the ACCBank had turned up at her home and taken occupancy of the surrounding property.
“I owe about €2.2million including interest,” Margaret told Joe Duffy on the Liveline programme.
“In 2007 I met an ACC manager who gave me a loan of €1.2m. He, being a farmer himself, looked at the property I was buying.”
HELPING DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN
Margaret had, it was claimed, started the equestrian centre as a way to help disadvantaged young people.
“I knew lads and young fellas out the road who were getting into trouble. Usually if you get a child that’s in trouble and he gels with a horse that will become his lifeline,” she told listeners to Liveline The receivers arrived at the property in Burncourt at 11am on Wednesday, August 31.
Margaret was not on site at the time and claims to have been only informed of their arrival by local gardai.
“They landed in last Wednesday with 2 articulated trucks and 11 men. I wasn’t there and the guards rang me to come back. They had opened the gates, gone into the farm and they had a JCB filling in holes. Then they brought in a plough, a big industrial plough, to cut up the land so that I cannot put in an animal here. They would literally starve here if they came in,” she told Liveline.
REDUCED TO TEARS
Margaret was reduced to tears when she told the RTE radio presenter of how frightened she is.
“I’m so afraid. How would you feel if there were eleven fellas outside your door dressed like the army and laughing and grinning? You’ve no idea of the consequences. Sitting here it’s like someone waiting to die.”
Margaret has very much adopted a public forum on her experience with the receivers appointed by ACCBank.
“I’m the only one who took the action - I took it because I have no choice,” she told The Avondhu.
“What I am finding also is that stories like mine are being censored by the media who do not want to public to hear these stories. I want all those who are being repossessed or have already been repossessed to contact me to see if they had criminal conduct in their relationship with the banks.”
Published:
Thursday 8th September 7:11pm
