Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 12:

In page 54, between lines 7 and 8, to insert the following:

“(4A) Where a process adviser does not make use of the services of the staff and facilities of the eligible company to which the process adviser has been appointed, the process adviser shall give a written reasoning for this decision.”.

Section 558ZY covers the remuneration costs and expenses of the process adviser. Section 558ZY(4) covers the process adviser in so far as is reasonably possible to make use of the services of the staff and facilities of the eligible company to which the process adviser has been appointed.

This is a welcome part of the Bill and these people will assist the process adviser. However, I have a concern that we will have a situation where a company in the new small business administrative rescue process, SCARP, ends up incurring additional costs because it has staff that are appropriate but those staff may not be used by the process adviser. I am not necessarily talking about cases where there are straight-up academic qualifications that one has and another does not. If somebody has those facilities, it will end up costing them more. The process adviser probably comes from a company which has these facilities and these personnel they contract out to other companies. We do not want to end up with additional costs on the company where such costs could potentially be defrayed. Where a company's staff and facilities are not used, a written reason should be given to at least explain why and give them a chance to engage in that regard.

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