Veteran gangland criminal Martin Foley is fighting the Criminal Assets Bureau's (CAB) attempt to seize his home because he has failed to pay an outstanding tax bill of almost €1 million.
The agency is seeking an order to seize the house in Dublin to pay off at least some of the debt.
CAB assessed Foley as owing over €916,000 in unpaid taxes between 1993 and 2000, a figure which has since increased due to interest and penalties.
The case has been going on for more than ten years when the judgment was registered against the house.
The house, at Cashel Avenue in Kimmage, is registered in the names of Foley and his deceased wife Pauline, but his current wife Sonya is arguing that she owns at least half of it and it should not be sold.
She says if that happens, she and her daughter will be made homeless.
They say they are married and have a child together who was born in 2015, but the court was told they have not produced a marriage or a birth cert.
'Several attempts to engage'
Martin Foley claims he has made "several attempts to engage" but all have been rejected.
He says he works two days a week as a van driver but "struggles to get by on my pension." He is 74, his wife is on disability and he says they have "no additional assets".
The Dublin City Sheriff visited the house to seize property to set against the debt but only raised €2,503.
Foley says he is willing to engage in a Mortgage to Rent Scheme whereby CAB can sell the house but he would live in it with his wife and child and make a monthly contribution through a "payment plan".
He says he also offered to hand over to CAB "the benefit of two defamation actions" he is taking against the BBC and Penguin Books and he insists that his "wife and child should not be made homeless".
Foley also claimed he was led to believe that CAB and the Revenue Commissioners had agreed not to pursue him for the outstanding €1m tax bill because he had made a deal with them.
However the 75-year-old claimed that he was told if he did not pursue the Gilligan gunman Charles Bowden for €120,000, CAB would not pursue him for the tax debt.
Bowden, who is now in the witness protection programme, was responsible for the weapons used by John Gilligan’s drugs gang and gave evidence against Gilligan and Brian Meehan in the Special Criminal Court.
He also admitted in the Special Criminal Court that he loaded the gun used to shoot Martin Foley when he was shot and seriously injured outside his home.
Meehan is still serving a life sentence for the murder of Veronica Guerin.
Foley also claimed that he paid over €36,000 to the Revenue Commissioners 23 years ago, and that "a form of set off" should be allowed.
He said if he had received the €120,000 he was due when he won his case against Charles Bowden, he would have given that to CAB and this would have gone "a long way", with the additional contributions to pay off the original €178,000 debt.
He says he inherited the house from his mother and it is not the proceeds of crime, but the Circuit Civil Court was told that is not an issue in this case, as this case relates to an outstanding tax bill.
His wife Sonya says that she is not liable in any way for the debt owed to CAB and pointed out that the house was her home and only property.
"There is no reality to me purchasing another home," she says. "Eviction would make my daughter and I homeless."
Evidence 'bare' and 'vague'
Barrister for CAB Shaula Connaughton Deeny said, however, that no explanation has been offered as to why Sonya Foley cannot work.
"She says she’s on disability, we’ve no evidence of that, their evidence is vague and bare at best," she said.
"We have no evidence of bank accounts or other assets they may have, how they are all surviving without any income.
"There is nothing vouching anything they say before the court," she said.
Martin Foley has more than 60 previous convictions including for assault robbery and possession of weapons. He was part of the criminal gang led by Martin Cahill who was known as the general and has survived several attempts on his life.
His barrister Keith Farry said that Foley was led to believe this would not be pursued and now after all these years, it was "unfair and disproportionate" to do so. He had remarried and the seizure of their home would have a detrimental effect on his current wife and child.
Sonya Foley was represented by barrister John Temple.
Judge Fiona O'Sullivan said she will give judgment in the case next week.
