Mr. Lorcan O'Connor:

Clearly, the legislation and the ISI are new, but the legislation was developed with reference to best practice in many other jurisdictions. The Personal Insolvency Act sought to go one step further in trying to deal with secured debt.

I think that was necessary because the difficulties the country has faced in the past five or six years have been primarily property-related; therefore, if we did not try to introduce some solution to deal with secured debt, we would not be tackling the problem.

The legislation lists a number of options that are envisaged within a personal insolvency arrangement as a potential solution. One of these options is that secured debt be written off in certain circumstances.