Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

-----to make that kind of commitment. This is serious piece of legislation which sets out a range of options and it is revolutionary in the sense that it is a generational change or a three generational change in the law on insolvency.

The Bill will not just apply to mortgagees; it will apply to insolvency in general. There are different arrangements. For instance, in the case of a person who has debt up to €20,000 with no assets and no way of paying the debt, the Bill will provide a method for writing-off that debt in a non-judicial way. The person is clear of the debt and is back in business and can start living his or her life and also make a contribution to the economy. Bankruptcy is at the other extreme. A bankruptcy order is imposed on an individual which will involve repayment over five or six years but he or she is out of bankruptcy after three years which means there is the opportunity to start again in business or to move on. I refer to the United States where one's first bankruptcy is a sign of success and this is being held up to us all the time. This Bill moves the situation in that direction. In between there is a range of non-judicial proceedings.

The Senator asked why there is registration in court - a court involvement in one of the processes. On the advice of the Attorney General, it was thought prudent to ensure that it would not be subject to constitutional challenge that the arrangement would be registered in court. However, it is not a court hearing but rather it is a registration in court of an agreement.

On the question of the lack of an appeals mechanism, the intent in the sections shows that it is an arrangement by agreement. How can one appeal something that is supposed to have been reached by agreement because either there is an agreement or there is not? To appeal the lack of an agreement is legal nonsense. The bank does not have a veto but rather it has a vote, the same as any other creditor and it has a vote in proportion to what it is owed. The banks and the other creditors have votes but they do not have vetoes. If there is no agreement, the option exists to move to bankruptcy. This is the big pressure on the bank because if it makes an agreement under the non-judicial arrangements, there is a great chance that it will recover a high proportion of what it is owed. If there is no agreement, bankruptcy follows and the bank may then get very little in the case of a limited payments order over a short period of time and a person emerging from bankruptcy in three years. I do not say the Bill is a perfect piece of legislation but it is breaking new ground. I ask the Senators to consider it and to table amendments and we can move on. There are people waiting for this legislation. The Senator's point is that this is a useless Bill. In case anybody would feel anyway hopeful about dealing with a mortgage issue, Senator Darragh O'Brien says, "There is no hope here lads, you are still in the swamp." That is not helpful.