Seán Conlan (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

The Personal Insolvency Bill can be the central plank in a suite of legislation aimed at addressing the problems of thousands of our people mired in the unsustainable debt which is the legacy of the Celtic tiger years. This is not a knee jerk reaction to a current problem, but an attempt to address our insolvency legislation which is acknowledged to be outdated, penal and retrograde.

This Bill is long overdue and honours commitments agreed in the EU-IMF deal. It also addresses concerns raised in a number of recent reports regarding the draconian nature of our insolvency laws compared to those of our European and international counterparts. The Bill seeks to overhaul the laws of bankruptcy and personal insolvency by introducing a system of non-judicial debt settlement and establishing the insolvency service, while updating the approach to judicial bankruptcy proceedings. In bringing this legislation into force, we must be mindful of the thousands of decent people who will rely on it to free themselves from the unsustainable debt burdens they bear in the wake of changing financial circumstances and often through no fault of their own, brought about by the deteriorating economic environment in the economy over the past number of years.

See this speech in context