Mr. Lorcan O'Connor:

I agree that the personal insolvency practitioner is completely central to the success of these new arrangements, more so than the ISI or any other stakeholder. It is for that reason, given the time constraints we have faced, that we have put in place what we believe to be the most stringent means by which we can ensure that the quality of service that the practitioner offers to debtors is appropriate. We will have a supervisory role in monitoring that. For example, we will be visiting practitioners on an annual basis, and these visits will be announced and unannounced. We will be looking at their working papers to ensure that what is required of them in carrying out their statutory duty is done correctly. We will then identify those that warrant specific visits. For example, if our statistics show an anomaly on where a practitioner's proposals sit vis-à-vis the bell curve that one might expect, we will ensure that such a practitioner is visited to see whether there is anything of concern.

The Act itself allows for a complaints mechanism to assess the situation. We will take on a complaint we receive from anybody, be it somebody from within the Oireachtas, a creditor or a debtor. Anybody who makes a complaint to the ISI can be confident that we will follow it up straight away. We do this because it is so important to protect the integrity of the role of the practitioner. If we do not do that, then very soon we could have creditors saying that they have no faith in the practitioner and asking how we could expect them to vote in favour of a proposal, or we could have debtors asking how we could expect them to ask a PIP to help them through a difficult time in their lives if they do not have faith in the integrity of the practitioner.