Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)

I will not oppose this amending regulation. It ensures the importance of the establishment of civil justice between European states.

With regard to insolvency in this country, we have to look at how many businesses were forced into insolvency as a result of inflation or Revenue interest and penalties? We are talking about small businesses as well as large businesses. How many companies entered insolvency once, twice, three times, four times or five times and reopened each time under another name? How many had a sister company into which they moved the assets before going through insolvency and starting all over again? Protections need to be put in place to ensure the directorships of such companies leave a trail across showing the same people in the same companies coming back. We need to make sure regulation in is place to deal with that.

Small businesses going into insolvency as a result of Revenue interest and penalties should be looked at to see if they can be saved. Small businesses have inflation costs, employment costs and running costs. They will not have ways and means of getting funding from their banks to keep them going because the banks look at them as only small entities or as non-viable. These small businesses are very important to their communities, however.

I will not oppose the motion. This amendment is needed to make sure that insolvency is updated for all the European Union member states. We need to have provisions in place at home to deal with rogue operators that go into insolvency two or three times or more.

See this speech in context