Mr. Conor O'Mahony:

Regarding budgets, as the director outlined earlier, we anticipate that we will have a requirement for additional staff to deal with the sort of administrative-type issues that arise for an authority or an agency, as opposed to an office. We have been in discussion with the Department on that. Our budgets were increased in anticipation of that. We got an extra €1 million in 2019 in anticipation that the legislation would be going ahead at that stage, but for various reasons that did not happen. Financially we are probably in pretty good shape. We have that budget, which should be adequate at least in the short to medium term to cover the staffing requirements that we anticipate and some of the other issues. I think that aspect is fairly good.

Deputy Bruton mentioned the financial crisis. After the financial crisis there was a real surge in liquidations and the numbers peaked in 2011 at about 1,400 cases a year. Those numbers have steadily dropped in the interim and we expect just over 400 insolvent liquidations in 2020. That has been a slow and steady reduction. Arising from the impact of the pandemic, there is a general view that the numbers are likely to surge again. The extent of that is quite unknown at this time because obviously, account needs to be taken as to the difference the Government supports will make. There are many different types of supports and many different impacts on different businesses. Some are completely devastated, others are doing okay and managing to get through it. Some of them are greatly helped by the Government supports, the Revenue's deferral of charges and other things of that nature. We are expecting a surge of liquidations and that will be a challenge for the office. We are trying to get ourselves ready to handle that.

The Bill makes provision to deal with companies where a liquidator is not appointed. Thankfully, this is a rare issue. This recommendation came from the Company Law Review Group a few years ago. The opportunity is being taken in the Bill to provide for that. It provides that if the directors allow a liquidation to proceed without a liquidator being appointed, they will face automatic restriction in the context where no liquidator is there to assess their performance, provide a report to us and then for a decision to be taken on whether that matter should go before the courts for restriction. It is a kind of a backstop to incentivise people and let them know there will be consequences if a liquidator is not appointed. We expect that provision, if it is enacted as is, to act as a significant disincentive for anybody to try to game the system by not appointing a liquidator.

I think that deals with the two questions, unless anybody wants to ask anything else.