Ms Maeve McElwee:

I may not have fully understood the question so please correct me if I am wrong. In an examinership, in most circumstances, the ambition is for the organisation to come out on the other side as a going concern, so it would not necessarily be unusual for agreements to be entered into to facilitate downsizing or redundancies. Agreements would be put in place about whether that would be done voluntarily and how that selection might happen. An agreement on an ex-gratiapayment or a collective agreement might well come into effect there because the ambition of coming out of examinership is that the business would continue. The collective agreement works because it is an agreed dynamic with the examiner with regard to the management of the business and its resources so it can continue. In an insolvency situation, the liquidator is challenged and charged with closing down the business and discharging its debts. It is no longer a voluntary agreement. There are no staff left to execute that agreement. There is no longer an incentive to have ex-gratiapayments to incentivise people to volunteer for that redundancy in many circumstances, because the business is closing and all of its operations will be terminated. Any aspect of that which this legislation seeks to convert to a statutory payment then needs to be distributed, either from the assets or from the State fund.