Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I thank Senators for acknowledging that we have put significant checks and balances in the Bill concerning the implications of the Laffoy judgment. In my 21 years as a practising solicitor, from 1976 to 1997, I had some practical experience of the use of instalment orders, garnishee orders and judgment mortgages, to try to use every trick in the legal book to get money or, as they say, blood out of a stone. It is a frustrating experience for somebody who is owed a debt to get money from people who wilfully refuse, even though they have the resources. When one gets the instalment order, people often say they will pay a fiver a month, that the person owed will never get the ultimate amount and that it will be made a painstaking experience. It is a frustrating experience for those who are owed money. It needs reform which is one of the reasons the Law Reform Commission was requested to review this matter.

I do not accept what Senator Norris says about the Government's attitude being haphazard. It is anything but haphazard in that we are taking a long-term look at it and are consulting with various people. The commission has already done some work, but will do a consultation process in September and will ultimately report on a complete reform of this area. I would welcome that. If we were to accept Senator Regan's amendment, we could be rightly accused of second guessing what the Law Reform Commission will ultimately report. It is important therefore to allow that consultation process to go ahead.

I have sympathy with the concept of attachment, which works pretty well with maintenance orders. It must be said, however, that 50% of those who end up in prison do so as a result of non-payment of maintenance orders, so the attachment was no good in those circumstances. There is a multiplicity of ways in which people can recover a debt. I am digressing a bit in telling the story of a case I took great pride in when I was a practising solicitor many years ago. It concerned an elderly couple who were badly assaulted by their next door neighbour in a row over a fence. The gardaí would not get involved, even though an assault took place, because it was one person's word against another. There was no criminal prosecution so we took a civil prosecution. This couple had been badly beaten. In the man's case we got £5,000 and £2,500 for the woman, which was a huge amount of money 20 years ago. We tried to go through the courts with instalment orders which we obtained, but it comes back to the central point. In my experience, and I think it would be the experience of most legal practitioners, the courts err on behalf of giving people their freedom. It is only when the creditor has gone to the nth degree that the debtor ends up in prison. In my recollection very few people were put in prison in my area during my time practising law. To come back to the story, I tried to get the money for these nice people who were from Canada but living locally in Dundalk at the time. We went though all these instalment proceedings but, of course, the fellow never paid. We probably did get a committal order against him but I do not think it was enforced. I took a personal interest in the case because I felt the man who assaulted the couple should not be let off. I therefore registered the judgment as a judgment mortgage against the assaulter's property. We left it there and did not apply for an order for sale, as one is entitled to do under a judgment mortgage. I thought no more about it and the people never got paid. Then about 15 years later I got a call from a local solicitor who was in the process of selling a house and was literally closing the deal that day. He did what are called the searches and, lo and behold, he came across this judgment mortgage which was registered against the property, as well as another mortgage with the building society. He could make neither head nor tail of this mortgage, but it transpired it was the mortgage I had registered on behalf of the people concerned. He obviously could not sell the house that particular day therefore. I then had to try to locate the people who had returned to Canada after the assault, without having received their money. Eventually we tracked them down and I was delighted to be able to tell them that they were going to get £7,500 plus interest at 11% for about 15 years. It was a lovely little box for them subsequently. I am digressing, but the story illustrates the difficulty a debtor must go through to get satisfaction.