Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The latter issues raised by Senator Cullinane are for my colleague, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and his Department. Some of what the Senator is referring to would arise under company law rather than personal insolvency law. If the Senator forgives me, I will not head into that area because it is not what we are dealing with here. Money owed to employees, however, also has a certain priority. That is not being touched by this.

I am loth to upset Senator Norris in his exploits in "Jaws" and "Jaws 2". I am not quite sure how we define loan sharks. It is important to remember that excluded debt does not mean that people are excluded from being paid. Excluded debt is debt that must be discharged and cannot be diluted or resolved in a debt settlement or personal insolvency arrangement. There may be certain disreputable individuals whom Senator Norris believes should never be paid. I cannot deal with that in this Bill.

What is boils down to is quite simple. If a debt settlement or personal insolvency arrangement is proposed the personal insolvency practitioner, of whom we will say more later, organises a meeting between a debtor and a number of creditors. The debtor may not be happy with the arrangements being proposed. For example, he may believe some individual is particularly disreputable and should not get paid or should not get paid as much as they are looking for because, perhaps, their interest rates are exorbitant. In that case the debtor may not agree to the arrangement being put in place. We cannot, in the Bill, determine who is an appropriate creditor to be paid because we think he is a decent person and which creditor should not be paid because we do not like him. One cannot deal with insolvency legislation that way.