Ms Nessa Cahill:

I will deal with the second question first. The report did consider several provisions of the Companies Act that seemed potentially to be relevant to the terms of reference. These were to do with the transfer of a specific asset in a way that left insufficient funds in the company to discharge the entitlements of the workers. We identified in the report that there are some provisions of the Act that seem to be well tailored to deal with that situation. Section 608 in particular, which I mentioned some time ago, would allow a liquidator, creditor or a contributor of a company to go in and seek to undo a transaction where a significant asset had been transferred out of the company with the effect of perpetrating a fraud. We noted that provision has been used on some occasions but not many. Some of the concerns referenced in the terms of reference could, at least, in principle, be addressed by using such a provision.

The Deputy also referred to section 599 of the Companies Act 2014. This had been outlined in our terms of reference and it has been given much consideration in the context of our terms of reference. The provision deals with the ability to pool assets. Let us suppose there is a group of companies and one of them goes into liquidation. If there is a basis to believe that another related company was involved in the management of the liquidated company and in some way contributed to its insolvency, then we should be able to look to that other company to pay the debts of the insolvent company. We noted that provision seems never to have been invoked. It is a novel provision although it is in existence on the New Zealand statute book. That is where it came into the Irish Statute Book. It does not seem to have been used in Ireland. It is a provision that we thought could potentially be useful in the situation we were looking at.

That is what we mean by saying some of the provisions of the Companies Act are potentially useful but seem to be more in need of being used. I am unsure if that answers the question from Deputy Stanton but that is what we meant when we said the provisions could be more in need of use rather than in need of amendment.