Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes. As the current Chairman, I raised this matter arising from a previous Committee of Public Accounts that dealt with the Social Insurance Fund, which handles unpaid amounts by employers in respect of PRSI, redundancy and insolvency payments. There was talk of collecting money from a widow who got something that she should not have got. After discussing the Social Insurance Fund and an outstanding €500 million to that account in the context of dissolved and non-trading companies, I raised this issue and pursued it.

It is in light of that I have discovered that it can actually happen that a company can be liquidated and there might be an asset at the end of the process. Any encumbrance on that asset also transfers to the State but the State has no mechanism in place to know whether the entity owned an asset.