Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I move amendment No. 33:

In page 11, line 7, after "income" to insert the following:

"and the amount and nature of the person's annual outgoings".

The purpose of amendment No. 33 is to provide greater clarity in respect of the workings of section 12, which sets down the criteria by which a court will assess the financial circumstances of a person who has been convicted of an offence. Section 12(a) should have regard to the amount of a person's annual income. The amendment suggests that this should also include the amount and nature of the person's annual outgoings. It is clear that if someone has a large number of outgoings, especially those of a fixed nature, such as rent, mortgage payments, child support payments, court-ordered maintenance payments, etc., these should be taken into account. Otherwise, the court might obtain a false or inflated sense of the resources available to a person.

Amendment No. 34 relates to section 12(b) and is designed to ensure a court considers all the assets of a person and not just his or her real or personal property. There could assets which do not fall within the scope of the Bill, such as intellectual property, shares etc.

I note the Irish Penal Reform Trust has suggested another point on section 12(b) to the effect that the estimated value of real property, in particular, should be assessed, together with the potential for sale in the prevailing real estate market. Such potential for sale might be zero in the prevailing real estate market, but this is an attempt to give the court a better sense of reality regarding a person's assets and resources when it is trying to assess his or her financial circumstances under section 12. Again, the intention is to try to make it more workable and give the court a little more information before it makes its judgment based on financial circumstances and ensure it is not given either an inflated sense of a person's income or a deflated sense of a person's assets, as a person might be wealthy in terms of assets other than real and personal property belonging to him or her.