A woman jailed for stealing €500,000 from the school where she worked as a bursar has been adjudicated bankrupt by the High Court.
Mary Higgins filed for bankruptcy over an “unsustainable” €1.76 million debt owed to Mount Sackville secondary school in Chapelizod, Co Dublin. Higgins’s total liabilities exceed her assets by about €1.77 million, according to her bankruptcy petition.
On Monday, Judge Liam Kennedy granted Higgins’s bankruptcy petition, stating that he was satisfied her application was in order.
Barrister Keith Farry, appearing for Higgins, said the petition arose in unusual circumstances, noting Higgins’s prosecution and subsequent imprisonment for the taking of funds from the school.
Farry said his client had been informed of her duties to engage with the official assignee tasked with overseeing her bankruptcy.
Mount Sackville was on notice of the application, the court heard.
In a sworn statement to the court, Higgins, from Hawthorn Lawn in Castleknock, Co Dublin, said the debt arose from a gambling addiction and a theft of funds from the school in respect of which she was convicted last year.
She underwent counselling and has been released from prison, she said.
Separate to the criminal proceedings, she said civil proceedings were issued by the former employer and she had consented to a civil judgment concerning the debt.
There was no finding of fraud or any damages awarded, she said. She had assigned her pension and sold her properties at Ashleigh Court and Farmleigh Park, both Castleknock, to repay the debt.
She said she had exhausted her means and the remaining debt was unsustainable. She went through the criminal and civil process and therapy, and the overhang of the debt was causing her serious mental health issues, she said.
Last June, a three-year prison sentence, with two years suspended, was imposed on Higgins after she admitted stealing €500,000 from the school between January 1st, 2012, and March 23rd, 2017.
She had spent 12 years as a pupil at the school and 24 years working there.
