Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that, at this point, it is difficult for the Minister to accept amendments to legislation. The practice in this House is to be not all that interested in accepting amendments from the Opposition or from backbenchers, which is unfortunate. We are all essentially trying to paddle in the same direction. Some of the Minister's logic for declining to entertain this amendment is a little thin, to say the least.

The bottom line is that 99% of companies which find themselves in financial difficulty end up going bust. That is a far higher percentage than in other EU member states. If one compares it to the US, it is pretty incomparable. What we are essentially saying is that we want entrepreneurship, innovation and companies to establish but when they find themselves in difficulty, we are not really prepared to help them to restructure, become more fit for purpose, survive, stay in business and keep people in employment, which is the crucial point in all of this. That is really unfortunate.

The Minister's statistics are correct. A total of 75% of examinerships are successful but it is a minute number of companies. When it comes to small companies, the number is even more minute. We are talking about dozens of companies every year rather than the thousands that should be going through the examinership process. The sad thing is that from speaking to business owners and the people who conduct examinerships in this country, we know that this is not likely to change substantially with this legislation, which is a missed opportunity. To give the Minister a flavour of it, I was surprised to learn that the small handful of companies that carry out all of the examinerships in the country were not consulted by the Department in framing this legislation. I asked all of them and none of them had been consulted. That in itself is quite extraordinary but when I spoke to them, what was very interesting was that the one examiner which conducts over 50% of examinerships for small companies in this country estimated the cost of examinership at about €50,000. He pre-negotiates fees with the legal profession, accountants etc. and estimates that all in, the amount is about €50,000. When I spoke to the other companies which specialise far more in examinerships involving big companies rather than SMEs, although they do some SME examinerships, they estimated the cost at €100,000 as a minimum so there is a big distinction even in the approach of examiners coming from the big firms and small firms.

The Minister may have misinterpreted my point about SMEs and their capacity to provide skills internally. I was not saying that small companies do not contain professional skills. Many of them do have these skills and what my amendment would do is simply oblige the examiner from the outset to use all of those professional skills within those companies before turning to junior associates in the big companies. That is what is happening at the moment and that is why those fees are estimated up-front at €100,000, which is off-putting for a small company with a small turnover. The idea that these are onerous obligations on an examiner that would not somehow fit the process is mistaken.

Another element of my amendment is to oblige the examiner to take into account the jurisdiction of the court. There is no obligation in the legislation for the examiner to take into account the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court vis-à-visthe High Court. That is something that the Minister, unfortunately, does not seem willing to accept, which is very disappointing.

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