Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, but the connectivity between the agency and the Houses of the Oireachtas will be through an annual report that will be produced and laid before both Houses. The justice committee will be engaged. There is no particular reason or need, and the legislation does not provide for it, to create a board of people who have oversight in circumstances where we appoint a chief executive who can run the agency, produce its annual report and report to the Houses of the Oireachtas. The justice committee will be able to ask questions and raise issues.

I thank the Deputies for their contributions on all Stages. It has been a lengthy process since we published the heads of the Bill. That was a worthwhile process as it facilitated the justice committee receiving submissions, which contributed to the development of the legislation. I thank all the Deputies who engaged with the Bill at the justice committee stage. I also thank all the individuals and organisations outside the House who made submissions to help us fine tune and refine the Bill. I must point out to those groups or organisations and, indeed, the financial institutions that we have had to make our own judgments on aspects of the legislation. We have taken account of submissions received but the legislation is not designed in the image of something the financial institutions want or something for which a particular group is lobbying. Indeed, the representative body of the financial institutions, the Irish Banking Federation, is somewhat unhappy with some aspects of the Bill.

I hope we have produced a balanced legislative measure that will be of genuine assistance to those who are in serious debt and are unable to discharge it, that is, those who genuinely cannot pay as opposed to those who simply will not pay. We hope we have provided the balance that will facilitate people working their way through financial troubles in a manner that is fair to both debtors and creditors. In the context of the mortgage interest issue and people in negative equity, where there are substantial mortgage repayments outstanding or arrears accumulated, we hope that this will provide a mechanism to facilitate many people, either through debt forbearance or debt forgiveness, working their way through a process which facilitates their retaining their home and seeing genuine light at the end of the tunnel.

I particularly thank Deputies who have been engaged in the marathon we have run in the last 24 hours on Report Stage. We will take on board a number of the suggestions for further improvements in the Bill, and I have mentioned some of those. We will also reflect on some of the other issues that arose. The Bill will be subject to further development, which we will have to agree with the Attorney General's office and the Parliamentary Counsel, as it goes through Committee and Report Stages in the Seanad. Deputy Collins quite fairly asked me what areas we have not addressed that will be dealt with in the Seanad. We will deal with a number of areas. There will be a new Part 5 to replace the current Part 5. It will provide extensive provisions for the regulation by the insolvency service of the new personal insolvency practitioners. I will not go into the details but there will be regulatory provisions, oversight and provisions to ensure there are indemnities to guarantee that where funds are being dealt with, those using personal insolvency practitioners are protected.

As I said in the course of this debate, many of the regulatory mechanisms already exist in other contexts. It is a question of adapting them to the insolvency legislation. A substantial amount of work has been done on that. There was an issue at one stage as to whether it would be the Central Bank or the insolvency agency that would deal with the regulatory side but in the context of providing a unified focus on the insolvency area it was decided that it would be the insolvency agency. I was optimistic that we would be in a position to bring the amendments before this House on Report Stage but we will have them for the Seanad proceedings. Members will have an opportunity to consider them when they come back from the Seanad.

There will also be a new Part providing for the revision of courts legislation, which is necessary to operate the new insolvency processes efficiently and effectively. On the various Stages we have discussed the provisions which envisage the new debt resolution arrangements being forwarded by the new insolvency agency to the court, which is essentially the Circuit Court. We are preparing an additional Part for this legislation to ensure that this is done with maximum efficiency so we will not have a backlog of arrangements waiting to be addressed, or a backlog of applications where somebody might wish to go to the court and rely on the circumstances in which one can raise an objection to an arrangement being approved. A detailed Part in that regard will be published. It will be designed to ensure that matters are dealt with efficiently, effectively and in a manner that does not incur unnecessary expenditure.

The transfer of the functions of the Official Assignee in Bankruptcy from the Courts Service to the insolvency service will take place. It makes sense that the Official Assignee in Bankruptcy is part of the insolvency service, so we will be dealing with that. We will also be improving the practical workability of the Bill's provisions both for debtors and creditors. This is very complex legislation and we will look at whether there are other areas to consider or address to ensure that no areas of uncertainty could arise.

We have been trial-testing the legislation by examining it section by section and seeing how, in practice, it would pan out in different debt scenarios, as suggested by Deputy Donnelly. Doing so is throwing up further issues we may need to address. We believe we can do so in a timely fashion during the debate in the Seanad and bring the issues back to the House. I hope I have responded fully to the query raised by Deputy Niall Collins.

I thank Members, particularly the three present in the Chamber, for the attention they have given to the Bill. The debate and discussion we had is very important. I have been on that side of the House for far too many years and they should not be dispirited by virtue of the fact we could not take on board some of the amendments tabled. Members performed an important function in tabling amendments because it gave an opportunity to tease out aspects of the Bill. It provided food for thought and in teasing out the issues, it affords us the possibility that some issue that had not been addressed comes out of left field and one realises it must be addressed. I thank the three Members present for their dedication and their contribution.

I hope the legislation will have been enacted by the time we get to Christmas. For our part, we will do everything possible to ensure it is successful in addressing the issues we are trying to address. I am of the view none of us has a monopoly on wisdom and it may turn out, in its application, to have an unintended consequence no one predicted. That may need to be addressed and, if so, we will do so with speed. I thank my officials for their substantial work on the Bill. On occasion in this House we do not acknowledge the extraordinary work of officials in Departments.

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