RC Church gets rights to Copperhole

THE RC church can now resume sea scouting activities at Copperhole on Monos Island.

The church can also now seek to have a lease to a portion of the one-acre property finalised with the Chaguaramas Development Authority (CDA).

In a ruling, Justice Eleanor Donaldson-Honeywell said the lease can be limited to the front area, or the Scout house, part of the Copperhole footprint.

In a 2007 claim for the rights of possession, the church took legal action against the occupiers of a portion of the property.

The church claimed rights of occupation were informally granted to it in the 1940s and it had had an application for a lease pending since 1996. In her decision, the judge granted judgement for the church against Lorna Joseph, Martha Joseph, and Dean Joseph, who filed a counter-claim for the right to occupy the property on adverse possession.

The Josephs claimed they were entitled to remain on the property because relatives of theirs were living in an annexe before a priest and the sea scouts moved into the front part of Copperhole. Donaldson-Honeywell said any claim the Josephs had on the annexe or the boathouse of Copperhole could have been raised with the CDA, but noted that they no longer occupied the annexe in the spot where the Copperhole building stood on Monos Island, so the decision had no immediate impact on them.

According to the ruling, the church proved on a balance of probabilities that it occupied the front part of the Copperhole that was used as the Scout house, and did so from the 1950s to 2004, when it was dispossessed by the Josephs.

Donaldson-Honeywell found that the occupation by the church was by its priests, its Belmont parish sea scouts and the Presentation College sea scouts.