Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

There are difficult decisions to be made in this particular area with regard to the number of years. It is not a matter of my personal preference. It is a decision that the Government must make.

The period for bankruptcy and extricating from bankruptcy, for example, in England was reduced to a period of one year. In other states there are different periods of years. There are a number of issues that must be considered in this context. We must ensure that bankruptcy is not used by individuals to evade debts fraudulently. There are those who owe money and those to whom money is owed and the position of both debtors and creditors, and the impact on their lives of the structure we put in place, must be considered.

We are giving careful consideration to how to proceed, both in the context of what I would describe as non-judicial means and also the judicial means of dealing with insolvency. There is a range of different options with regard to arrangements that may be entered into voluntarily with creditors and arrangements that may ultimately require an adjudication in a bankruptcy context.

I do not want to pre-empt the decisions to be made by Cabinet other than to say we are moving ahead carefully in this, but we also must be aware of unintended consequences that could arise that could have a detrimental impact on taxpayers in the State generally. This is a particularly complex area in the context of the unprecedented fiscal difficulties confronting the State and the banking difficulties with which Deputy Donnelly is intimately familiar.

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