Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Civil Debt (Procedures) Bill 2015.

Sometimes one has to stand back to see the wood for the trees. One has to cut through a lot of the hyperbole, the rhetoric, the inflammatory language and the images that are put before the House, such as what I have heard in the past ten or fifteen minutes, and look at the reality behind the introduction of this Bill. It appeared as a recommendation from the Free Legal Advice Centres, as far back as 2009, in its report entitled To No One's Credit. It was recommended by the Law Reform Commission in 2010. It appeared in my party's manifesto before the 2011 general election, at which we were elected as the largest party. It subsequently appeared in the programme for Government in 2011. If there is a criticism, it should be that it has taken this long to bring it before the House in 2015. As a matter of fact, a predecessor of mine from Cork South-West, the former Deputy Jim O'Keeffe, when spokesperson for justice, introduced a Private Members' Bill advocating more or less exactly what is in the Civil Debt (Procedures) Bill. Therefore, it has been knocking around for some time on the recommendation of some very respected bodies. It will be opposed, despite the fact that last year alone we committed almost 9,000 people to prison for non-payment of fines or civil debts.

We can continue to imprison people. We can continue to incarcerate them and take away their liberty for something as trivial as non-payment of a fine or, in the case of part of this Bill, non-payment of a debt, but there is something fundamentally wrong with this. There is something fundamentally unfair about denying people their liberty, in many cases giving them terms of several months in prison despite the fact that that is not what they will serve. In almost all cases, they will be out within hours or, in worse cases, days. The fact that they have been imprisoned remains, and goes against their name and on their records. It works against them in their communities. The option of an attachment order on earnings - or, indeed, where possible, on social welfare payments, although this would be minimal - has been proposed by many different agencies and organisations for a number of years.

I also welcomed the previous legislation that we enacted. I believe it will have a chilling effect on those who deliberately decide to avail of a service or deal in goods from a business or agency and not pay for it, despite the fact that it is clearly illegal and a breach of contract. It is fine if people want to oppose the Bill and say they support that, but we as public representatives have a strong responsibility to say we uphold the law that is passed in this Chamber, particularly when that law has been put before the people as part of a manifesto and included in a programme for Government.

We cannot call ourselves democrats only to be àla cartedemocrats and say that this is the part of democracy we like but that is the part we can do without because it does not support our agenda, or that we can shoehorn it into a different forum. One can call it street protest or whatever one likes, but advocating it is irresponsible and does no justice to anyone elected to the House who claims to be democratic. It does not matter whether people believe in democratic objectives for Ireland, or any other country to which they travel advocating for democracy, justice and civil rights and claiming to have a mandate. We have a mandate for this. We agreed it, but, lo and behold, when we have before us a very sensible and pragmatic proposal to allow for the smooth running of business the length and breadth of the country, those who advocate most in this House for democratic principles, justice, equality and fairness oppose the Bill and talk about hypocrisy in the same breath. They need to reflect on what they have said, what we have proposed and what we said before the general election, and then consider what "hypocrisy" really means.

Do we want to bring people from all over the country to Mountjoy to be incarcerated for a couple of hours before giving them their fares back to wherever they come from, be it west Cork, Donegal or any other community, when we can instead tell them that if they do not live up to their contractual obligations, the matter will be brought before a judge, who will make an order that they be penalised financially? People have been calling for this for years.

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