Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I suggest that it is something the Central Bank looks into.

My last question is for both the Department and the Central Bank. This is about the mess we are in. It is a mess one way or another. We have a company that went into liquidation and do not know when payments will be processed. We do not know if we can access MIBI to process some of the payments. We do not know how many commercial claims will not be paid by any of the funds. It has properly been highlighted that the great concern here is that claims in some cases involve matters of life and death. We are talking about serious injuries, death and people in very vulnerable situations. It is very clear that there will be no quick fix in this and that the matter will go on for a number of months until the liquidator finds out what assets and liabilities he has and whether the fund must be accessed.

Mr. Sheridan said that it was unprecedented to have an insurance company go into liquidation. Could we not look at a situation - tell me if I am just crackers on this - where the insurance fund pays out 65% of all claims and becomes a creditor of the assets of the company? The insurance fund is going to pay out 65% of all claims anyway up to a maximum of €825,000. Obviously things are structured a certain way, but instead of all this red tape could we not start to act in the interests of citizens - the claimants out there - and introduce legislation, if necessary, to provide that the insurance fund can pay out 65% of all claims where a company goes into liquidation? While people may get more if there are assets within the company, there would be an up-front payment. The insurance fund would then recoup whatever it could from the assets of the liquidated company.