Paul Bradford (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I suspect the amendments will not be accepted. There is an aspect of the debt relief notice to which we should give some consideration. Given the ¤20,000 limit, personal insolvency practitioners will almost certainly be excluded from any dealings with the category of people involved. As the sum of money is modest, there is no possibility of any money being available to remunerate a personal insolvency practitioner for working through the problems of these particular debtors. The money advice and budgeting service or another taxpayer agency will inevitably be funding whatever administrative work might be required. The entire cost of administering these solutions will fall on the taxpayer. If the limit was slightly higher, some of the administrative work on the processing of the relief notice might be carried out by a personal insolvency practitioner with a possible resultant saving to the State and to MABS, which otherwise would be doing the work.

While I will certainly listen to what the Minister has to say, we need to accept that the ¤20,000 limit, being so modest, is corralling the debtors in that category straight into the MABS route and there will not be the assistance or involvement I would expect of the outside personal insolvency practitioners who, because at that ¤20,000 limit, would not wish to be involved in the resolution process.