Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I thank Members on all sides of the House who spoke on this Bill. In particular, I acknowledge the support of the Labour Party. I regret that while all Government speakers acknowledged and commended the merit and principle of the Bill, none indicated a willingness to go so far as to allow it a Second Reading. This is a consequence of the Whip system that obtains in the House.

I have received a large volume of correspondence and telephone calls on this matter and have interviewed people at my constituency office in recent months. Since the publication of the legislation, I have been inundated with information from people throughout the State. One e-mail I received in recent days from an individual suffering from the activities of debt collectors is particularly relevant:

I am writing to you nearing my wits end. I am involved in the construction industry and ran a successful business until six months ago. I provided substantial employment, paid all my bills and taxes and worked very hard to achieve my simple goals. I never made a fortune in development, far from it. The truth is I got into the business too late in that the money had been made a few years before. Not alone am I at risk of losing my home, my reputation and all I have worked for - and I mean worked, most of the time doing 18 to 20-hour days, seven days a week - but now I am faced with a different problem, a far greater one, that is, debt collectors. I would like to ask how these people can operate a legitimate business. They terrorise people with their calling to your door with hired thugs, calling to your place of work, calling to your family.

I recognise that I owe money. As you can understand, I cannot find work and a lot of money is owed to me. But I am going about it the right way by going though the courts. All I want to say is that the issue of criminals running debt collection businesses must be raised at the highest level before it is too late, not just for me but for others in my situation. I like to think of myself as a businessman, a hard working one at that, providing for myself and my family and providing revenue for this State. What have these criminal heavies ever done except the obvious? I am just a hard-working man trying to make a living and I need redress under the law.

There has been criticism of this legislation from Members on the other side of the House in their claim that it will install a new burden in terms of an additional regulatory mechanism or quango. That is not the case. What I have proposed is deliberately designed to be part of the existing State agency structure. There have been claims that this new regulatory framework will cost millions of euro, involve thousands of personnel and impinge on the work of the Garda Síochána. Nothing could be further from the truth. The proposed mechanism would be self-financing. Every person who successfully applies for a licence would be obliged to pay a licence fee, along the lines referred to by the Minister of State, Deputy John Curran, in reference to the Private Security Authority. I can only conclude that the only reason the Government proposes to deny the Bill a Second Reading and a subsequent line-by-line scrutiny in committee arises from narrow party political concerns. That is greatly regrettable.

Why are we out of step as far as a regulatory framework is concerned? There are European Union-wide regulations in operation in all other member states. The Bill has received the support of bodies engaged at the coalface with those who are suffering as a result of straitened financial circumstances. It has received the support of the free legal advice centres and the Combat Poverty Agency. The Irish Institute of Credit Management has said it would be satisfied to have its members regulated in order to distinguish legitimate collection agents from the "less salubrious" practices of others. Moneylenders, mortgage managers, credit investment and insurance intermediaries, bank finance houses and credit unions are all regulated, most of them by the Financial Regulator. There is every reason that those engaged in the debt collection business, who are acting on behalf of these institutions or have purchased debts from them, should be regulated. The failure to do so has given rise to the serious difficulties of which we are aware throughout the State.

I accept this legislation may not be perfect. I acknowledge that we on this side of the House do not have the advice of the Office of the Attorney General and a plethora of parliamentary draftsmen who can spend months - or years, in some cases - working through the legislative process. That is no reason to deny the Bill a Second Reading. If the Bill were to reach Committee Stage, we could draw on the wisdom not only of Members on this side of the House, but also on that of the Government and its advisers.

If the Government proceeds to throw out this legislation, we will have a situation where there are no rules, no regulation, no standards, no licensing system and no control in this area. That is an invitation to criminal heavies to continue their business in debt collection and to put further pressure on hard-pressed individuals and families. This is a lost opportunity. I am certain the House will have no choice but to revisit this issue at a future date. It is regrettable that narrow party political interests on the part of Fianna Fáil have hindered this legislation. There is little point in mentioning the Green Party as it has had no involvement in this Bill, no more than it seems to have any involvement in the workings of this House on a daily basis.

This was a bad day's work. The Bill presented the House with an opportunity to address this issue, which I have no doubt we will have to deal with in future. We cannot allow the situation which obtains to continue. We do not have a system of regulations or licensing and we cannot have a free-for-all. Evidence is emerging from across the country that people are being harassed and intimidated by shadowy heavies engaged in the debt collection business who are able to do so with impunity owing to a lack of regulation.

See this speech in context