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

I thank the Senators for their contributions. I have great respect for the work the free legal advice centres have done in this area, and their commentary on it. I suppose I should make a declaration of interest in that many years ago I was a director of a free legal advice centre. I was chairman of the free legal advice centres and, in their early days, I was engaged in much of the campaigning in which they are now engaged on a broad range of issues.

This is a question of context and balance. If we look at our neighbouring jurisdiction in Northern Ireland, the mechanism similar to the debt relief notice only applies to debts of up to £15,000. That is also the position in the other parts of the United Kingdom. Our debt relief notice mechanism, if one works out the currency differentiation, actually goes to a higher sum, at ¤20,000. One must remember what is the effect of a debt relief notice. It protects persons who have debts of ¤20,000 or less from being sued on foot of those debts. It creates the possibility that after three years, without the person having paid anything if his or her financial circumstances have not improved during the supervision period, the debts are simply wiped out and they walk away from them.

For every debt that is wiped out from which persons walk away there is a creditor, someone owed money. It might be the local shop that allowed a family or an individual in difficulties to run up a bill of ¤500, ¤600, ¤700 or a couple of thousand euro for household goods. It might be the local plumber or electrician who came around to do a little work. It might be the local credit union that is owed ¤3,000 or ¤4,000. There is a range of persons whose lives are impacted by an individual's incapacity to meet his or her financial obligations. Individuals find themselves in those circumstances for many different reasons, some because something unfortunate has happened in their lives such as they have had unexpected difficulties and they always assumed they would be in a position to make payments. Some find themselves in that position because they simply incur a debt with no intention of making payments and have no thought for the impact on others. Let us not be naive about it. There are such persons who, if they can get away with making payments due to persons for work done on their behalf, for services provided or for products supplied, will do so. We must provide a balance. We cannot provide incentives to individuals to run up a large amount of debt knowing that if they do so, after three years they can simply walk away from it, wash their hands of it and damn the consequences for those affected by it.

It is important to achieve a balance and we believe we have achieved that balance in the provisions. As I stated, I do not like the phrase but, in the context of debtors, we are being more generous than is the case in similar legislation in a number of other countries. For those reasons, I cannot accept the amendments that have been proposed.