Mr. Lorcan O'Connor:

The Deputy is correct to state that anyone is free to choose whether to travel to the UK to avail of the bankruptcy regime there. From a financial perspective, a person would be no better or worse off. A bankruptcy trustee in the UK should act pretty much in exactly the same way as the official assignee here, and a bankrupt person loses all assets and income streams other than what is required for reasonable living expenses. Equally, the kind of protections that might exist here with regard to a principal private residence or a pension may not extend to the UK. That is a factor to be taken into account. To avail of the UK one-year term of bankruptcy, it must be established that a person's main centre of interest is in the UK, and that will take a number of months, probably around six months. The one year actually becomes 18 months when this is taken into account. One is then comparing 18 months with the three years to see which is more attractive. For people with a family and a home here or with other ties to Ireland, I believe the differential is actually quite small, particularly when the financial outcome is the same whether in the UK or in Ireland. There have been a number of high-profile cases in the UK. In the case of those who apply to become bankrupt in the UK and are adjudicated not to be co-operating with the trustee, the one-year exit from bankruptcy is postponed until that co-operation is deemed to have taken place. Those are the factors at play when a person is comparing the different options.