Mr. Patrick Davitt:

We welcome the changes to the slip rule, believe it or not. It is a welcome provision that extends the slip rule to warning notices, company statements and statutory declarations as well as to termination or notice of termination. This is a welcome provision from our point of view to avoid a notice being declared invalid on the basis of minor technicalities, which is what we find has been happening. This Part of the Bill should be amended, however, to make clear that one slip or omission contained within the document can be cured by the slip rule where appropriate to do so.

I am aware that some adjudicators at the tribunals at the moment - we hear this quite a bit – have taken the view that the current section 64 refers to a slip or omission in the singular. We believe this means that if there are multiple errors in the notice, the slip rule cannot apply but this is not correct in our interpretation. The Act of 2005 provides that in every legislation the singular includes the plural already and vice versa.

However, this should be clarified in the legislation to ensure decision-makers are being consistent on this point. I thank the Senator for allowing me to add the bit about the slip rule but we do welcome the amendments in it.