Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. Deputy Stephen Donnelly has heard it before from his constituency colleague, Deputy Andrew Doyle - in fact, peace nearly broke out and it was nearly going to go the whole way. We welcome the spirit of Deputy Donnelly's intervention. Leaving aside all the documentation with regard to rebuttal and the legally binding voluntary commercial debt plan, there is a weakness there. What I picked up on was a weakness in respect of the protection of creditors. I will digress a little. We had an awful experience with subbie busters ruining small companies. My sympathy always lies with the question of how to provide small companies with legally binding protection. This did not exist during the past ten years. Fortunately, we have introduced the Construction Contracts Act to give protection to smaller companies. The weakness in the legislation is that there is no legal protection, although Deputy Donnelly will argue differently.

We have a Pandora's box in respect of anything to do with banking. Does the personal insolvency legislation cover every aspect of everybody's rights in a legally binding process of restructuring loans? No, it does not. Who holds the veto? The banks hold the veto in respect of third parties. Will the examiner or a third party hold a veto? Will there be an automatic process in this Bill or will it still be the banks? It comes back to the banks. A gentleman in my constituency paid commercially for a third party in the form of a restructuring plan. It is a sensible restructuring plan but he cannot get it advanced to the stage of the personal insolvency process. Once again, the bank holds the veto.

The aggressive job we need to do in the House is to hold the banks to account. Obviously, they were not held to account in the past. The Central Bank has a job to do in that regard. We are going to have a banking inquiry so that we can learn from mistakes. However, this very day the banks still hold the cards, and it suits the banks not to engage in restructuring plans. It suits banks to have a bad debt that will be bought by a third party at a lower amount to solve the problem of bad debts on the bank's balance sheet. That is something in respect of which we must learn from the personal insolvency legislation.

We must also broaden the debate beyond company law and into procurement. There are stringent turnover requirements for companies in that they will get Government contracts only if they hit a threshold of so many million euro in turnover. We should use the opportunity to debate how we can provide protection to smaller companies in respect of Government contracts. Moving on to another Department, many centralised decisions are putting smaller companies at a disadvantage. Large companies can cherry-pick all sorts of Government jobs, including the provision of food in hospitals. Are we not looking after local companies and local food produce? This is another area where we need to broaden the debate.

My sympathy lies with the creditors. Deputy Stephen Donnelly argues that creditors will be protected under his Bill. I am interested in hearing what he has to say. We have had a horrible experience where creditors get burned when subbie busters come in. Companies can set up under a different name and do not have to move country. They can burn the creditors. Anything to move the debate forward in protecting small companies and creditors is a good move.

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