Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to make a brief contribution on the Civil Debt (Procedures) Bill 2015. I welcome the provision to abolish imprisonment for non-payment of fines, which has been a particularly problematic issue for the Prison Service in the case of smaller fines. The legislation repeals sections of the Debtors (Ireland) Act 1872 on imprisonment for non-payment. When the Law Reform Commission reported in 2010, attachment of earnings orders were primarily used to enforce maintenance orders in family law cases. Since then, however, they have been sanctioned for other matters a number of times in legislation, including in the Finance Act 2012 for local property tax, in the Fines (Payment and Recovery) Act 2014, which has not yet been commenced, for unpaid fines, and in the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2013 for social welfare overpayments. This legislation is, if one likes, part of the panorama of austerity the Government has inflicted on citizens.

I note the Government has not adopted the Law Reform Commission's recommendation that an employer who dismisses an employee or acts prejudicially towards him or her based on an attachment of orders should be guilty of an offence. I ask the Government to urgently address this absence from the Bill.

The Oireachtas Library and Research Service, which is always very helpful to Deputies in providing research on complex legal issues, has produced a digest on the Bill which outlines the longstanding legal mechanisms in place to enforce judgment debts and the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission in this regard. The commission invokes Article 1 of the fourth protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights which provides that "No one shall be deprived of his liberty merely on the ground of inability to fulfil a contractual obligation." The amendment of the Debtors (Ireland) Act 1872 removing references to the imprisonment of debtors for non-payment of debt in section 26 is, therefore, a progressive development. However, a debtor may be still imprisoned under the court enforcement measures provided for in the Enforcement of Court Orders (Amendment) Act 2009.

The clear linkage of much of the Bill - at least as far as section 26 - to the campaign to impose water taxes on an unwilling population is deplorable and obscures the other serious impacts the legislation may have on hard-pressed, low-income citizens and families. I have repeatedly asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Alex White, and his predecessor in that portfolio, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, to address the issue of energy poverty and the spiralling costs of gas and electricity for low-income families. The payment of bills for these vital services and a wide range of other household necessities will come within the ambit of this Bill. Will the current arrangements to assist poor households in accessing these services be replaced by recourse to this legislation by service providers? This is one of the key concerns about the wider implications of this Bill.

As I indicated, I welcome the provisions in respect of the 1872 Act. However, the attachment of a debtor's earnings and deductions from his or her social welfare payments open up a new vista of pressure on the poorest citizens in society. The overall context of this Bill is a further turning of the screw of austerity on the poorest citizens. This is the reason I oppose the Bill and will vote against it next week. I also categorically oppose the deplorable manner in which the Government has conducted itself in attempting to force people to pay for its farcical quango, Irish Water, which is the real purpose of the Bill.

The report by the Law Reform Commission was published in 2010, one year before the current conservative Government came to power. It is only now that 500,000 households or 45% of all households with a mains water supply have refused to even register for the water tax that the Government is acting on this so-called reform measure. This is the only reason we are seeing movement on the suite of options the Law Reform Commission proposed. The nub of the Bill is to bully people into paying twice for a service from Irish Water and dress it up as a modernising initiative. In that regard, the Bill is dishonest and misleading.

The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, and his Fine Gael-Labour Party colleagues are targeting almost half of all households on the spurious grounds that all those who do not pay the water tax are "will not pay" citizens and these households will be forced to pay water taxes. Surely there are many hundreds of thousands of these households for which the water taxes are the straw that broke the camel's back. People simply do not have the resources to pay these taxes and they will not do so.

Throughout the Bill there are seemingly reasonable but which are in reality useless safeguards to protect debtors on the minimum wage, very low incomes or social welfare benefits and allowances. Thus the amount of a liquidated sum in section 6 is set at between €500 and €4,000, while section 7 lays out detailed guidelines for a judgment on debtors’ earnings and a statement of means, including social welfare benefits but excluding child benefit. The Minister in her speech which I read carefully spoke at length about how fair the statement of means could be for people under pressure to pay debts of this kind.

Under section 9 a court may not make a concurrent attachment of earnings order and a deduction from payments order, while section 10(4)(b) lays down that compliance with the order will leave a sufficient amount to "the judgment debtor to maintain himself or herself and anyone dependant [sic] on him or her". That is a problematic part of the Bill. The Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality, Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, knows from his work with our constituents that people are often trying desperately to survive, not even from week to week but from day to day. We deal with people who are under massive pressure in the private rental sector who do not put food on the table in order to keep a roof over their heads. Perhaps 200 families in our constituency are homeless this very day.

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform is given a key role in determining the employer of judgment debtors in the service of the State, including us. The Minister for Social Protection has a smaller key role under sections 16 to 19, inclusive, for judgment debtors who have been beneficiaries of net scheme payments. The Government should have studied net scheme payments in greater detail. I read in some of the interesting research compiled for us that the Minister of State’s colleague, Deputy Fergus O’Dowd, from County Louth had said an attachment order against social welfare payment could only be for €2 a week because the net payment was the supplementary welfare allowance, SWA, limit. We find from experience that people pay more than this. How does this square with the lofty ideals in some sections of the Bill? The deductions from social welfare payments must have regard to the particular circumstances of the judgment debtor and leave a sufficient amount to him or her "to maintain himself or herself and anyone dependant [sic] on him or her". That does not happen. That is one of the problems with this legislation which is part of the panorama of austerity.

The same weasel words are repeated in section 20 where the variation of a relevant order “will not leave a sufficient amount to him or her to maintain himself or herself and anyone dependant [sic] on him or her”. When the Minister of State reports to his colleague, the Minister for Justice and Equality, he might ask for clarification about the SWA limit which is, I think, €186 per week. I say this in respect of the real lives of the people we see in tears every weekend and when we walk around our constituency who are desperately trying to exist from day to day.

The events of this week in Dáil Éireann have marked another disgraceful milestone in the demise of the Labour Party. The savage cuts imposed on one-parent families this week by the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton; the imposition of the guillotine in the debate on the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014 under the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, and this Civil Debt (Procedures) Bill 2015 represent a assault on the poorest sections of Irish society and the total abandonment of the century-old egalitarian economic ideals of the founders of the Irish Labour Party. I look around at some of the senior Labour Party Deputies, people to whom, sadly, I sometimes refer as extinct volcanoes. In times past, in recent decades, some of these colleagues who still take the Labour Party Whip would have fulminated and savagely, remorselessly condemned this Bill, the disgraceful Bill that was before the House yesterday and what happened to lone parents on Thursday. They would have said that was directly opposed to the part of the political spectrum for which any workers’ party should stand. They have not done this. They have gone, gently, quietly, into the good night of oblivion which will happen to them, sadly, in the coming general election, instead of condemning these measures, as they should have done, before the Rabbitte-Gilmore leadership eviscerated and destroyed the heart and mission of the Labour Party as those gentlemen and their colleagues tried so hard and so desperately and in a hand to hand way to do but signally failed to do before 1999. Deputy Eamon Gilmore had the effrontery to stand up in this Chamber a couple of weeks ago and talk about the political cost to himself of his appalling betrayal of the independent Labour Party programme developed until 1997 by generations of the Labour Party. Nowhere did he recognise the intense suffering and the real economic and social cost visited on citizens by his cowardly surrender to the vicious Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael austerity project from 2009. It is a project that, unfortunately, the Minister of State has also embraced.

Like the so-called environment legislation debated in the past few days, this Civil Debt (Procedures) Bill 2015 is another sleveen and sinister law designed to intimidate the huge portion of the nation which remains steadfastly opposed to water taxes. We are in a clear majority. We know this from walking the streets and attending meetings in our constituency, organised by valiant groups such as Clarehall Says No and it does say no to this imposition, as do Marino, Donnycarney, Clontarf, Raheny, Coolock and Howth. It is the straw that broke the camel’s back. As the Acting Chairman, Deputy Derek Keating, knows, being a Dublin Deputy, the levels of property tax we pay are so immense that this issue was the final straw for many. Those citizens have continued their courageous, stubborn resistance to the additional imposition of water taxes on top of property tax and all the earlier cuts and tax impositions.

This legislation may prove a hopeless and useless device to cow and intimidate the millions of people who, like me, have steadfastly refused to register for this new poll tax. I asked the Taoiseach two years ago to hold a general election as a referendum on this issue, as our Greek colleagues are doing. I asked him to put it to the people to see what they would say. It will be put to them in the next six or seven months at the earliest, whenever Fine Gael decides to pull the plug on the Labour Party. That referendum will effectively be held. It should have been held two years ago as we should have given the people an input into the troika austerity measures. When the Government was unable to get the deal that the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, said he had got in 2012, the deal that was somehow on the table and then disappeared off it, we coat-tailed on our valiant Greek colleagues and received a much lower interest rate on our remaining debt, we should have put a referendum to the people on how to move forward. I know that the Acting Chairman is a student of economics and notice the Department of Finance has presented us with figures which show clearly that this year and every year between 2016 and 2020 we will pay €8 billion in interest if we are lucky, if there is no increase in interest rates on the stupendous debt we have gained by bailing out the bankers. It amounts to €2,500 a year for every man, woman and child in the State. The total is €42 billion, the size of an Irish budget for a whole year, or the education budget for every year. That is what we must send to the banksters in order to rescue the German and French banks. That is what the Government has left us with. In that context, it brings forward miserable legislation to inflict further pain and restriction on the poorest people in the country.

Looking through the Bill, I agree with Deputy Clare Daly and wonder how sections such as section 5, the service of documents for an attachment of earnings order, will work in practice. It refers to “leaving it at the address at which the person ordinarily resides” or “sending it by post to the address at which the person ordinarily resides” and so on. I am very familiar with some of the issues that have arisen in respect of traffic offences and the difficulty in trying to make contact with people who are liable for penalty points. The existing long-standing legislation on personal debt refers to registered letters and letters of credit and bills going through the courts. This is a highly specialised legal area.

This seems totally farcical in terms of the main purpose of this Bill. It also says that the service of notice of the attachment order to the employer may be effected by leaving the order or a copy of it at the employer's residence or place of business in the State. To whom will that be addressed? What level of management will be involved? What provisions will be made for small and medium-sized business owners? The Minister of State spoke recently about bringing in non-discriminatory legislation relating to tenants. He has been talking about it for the past six months but we still have not seen anything. How will he protect employees on whom an attachment order is served if their employers are browned off with it and might victimise them? The Bill is gravely deficient in this regard. There are data protection and privacy serious issues relating to sharing information with a person's employer or the Department of Social Protection. What consideration was given to those issues in this Bill? I believe none was given.

It is set out extensively in section 7 that it will be an offence not to furnish the court with the necessary statement of means. Section 11 concerns the court's responsibility in respect of attachment orders on the person in question and the person's employer. I am very familiar with our overworked and under-resourced Courts Service in respect of traffic offences. How can attachment orders be made for 500,000 households through the Courts Service? It clearly will not happen and is something that, one hopes, the general election will resolve.

Like the Minister of State, every week, I meet and represent Irish citizens struggling to make ends meet after years of austerity and cuts. Many of these people are single mothers and often go without food to feed their children. The latest EU-SILC survey from 2013 showed us that 12% of our children live in consistent poverty, which is double the number since 2008 when the figure stood at 6%. According to Barnardos, a leading children's advocacy group and charity, this figure equates to almost one in eight children. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government likes to talk about his legacy. Here is a legacy - one child in eight living in extreme poverty. The Government is bringing in a Bill to turn the screws on them even further. Like other Labour Deputies, the Minister of State has the choice not to do this. Barnardos says:

Consistent poverty means that these children are living in households with incomes below 60% of the national median income and experiencing deprivation based on the agreed 11 deprivation indicators. This can mean going 24 hours without a substantial meal or being cold because parents are unable to afford to heat the home.

Barnardos says that nearly two-thirds of lone parents with one or more children experience deprivation. This was a very sad week in the history of the State in respect of its treatment of lone parents. It is particularly sad for people who come from the labour movement because it was Labour Party Ministers who first brought forward a benefit for lone parents and secondary benefits. The Tánaiste's new changes to the one-parent family payment are pushing more and more single parents deeper into poverty. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government's lack of action on the housing crisis means that more than 1,000 children will be living in hotel rooms tonight. This Bill, which is being rushed through along with the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, will punish people on low incomes and social welfare payments for not paying their water bills.

It is very sad. It is unworkable legislation. The Law Reform Commission in 2010 sought to reform this area. The section relating to the repeal of the 1872 Act is a valuable step forward but everyone knows the purpose of the rest of the Bill. This will fail. We will have the full discussion on all these matters relating to the entire austerity programme of the Government over the next number of months. I believe that in the next general election, as we have seen in other countries such as Greece and Scotland, people will have to make a choice about austerity. Are they with the parties of austerity - the Fine Gael-Labour coalition and Fianna Fáil - or they with people who have opposed austerity from day one? That is the choice when the election comes. I believe the majority of the people will choose to move away from austerity and this Bill will be changed drastically in the next Dáil.

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