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

It is cost neutral in the context of the first six being appointed from the existing number of county registrars. That is quite clear. The County Registrars Association has made the case that it feels that the grade is underutilised. I would be very surprised if a number of county registrars, and exceeding six, did not apply for these positions. Let us assume that appropriate individuals do apply, and who are recommended by the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, their appointment is cost neutral because it is not intended to replace them at present. We believe that the existing county registrars will be able to continue and maintain the work that is required by county registrars at the moment. Some of the tasks that county registrars used to undertake years ago are no longer undertaken by them. The new specialist judges will retain powers to do certain court work that county registrars currently do. To that extent it is cost neutral. Of course it is not cost neutral if no county registrar applies because then we will have to appoint additional individuals. If only three apply who are appropriate then clearly the position would have to be advertised and other individuals would be appointed.

It is important that the insolvency legislation is up and running and works efficiently. We must have the insolvency agency in place. We cannot expect that the anticipated volume of work that would arise would be coped with and dealt with by the existing court judges because they already have a very large amount of work. I am sure that they could cope with it after a fashion. That would be in the context of building up court lists of debt relief notices, debt settlement arrangements or personal insolvency arrangements awaiting either approval or, where a creditor raised a difficulty, some form of hearing would be needed to address the difficulty. The idea is that once a debt settlement is agreed and put in place it would be signed off and approved rapidly both in the interest of a debtor and a creditor. We cannot have a backlog of a year before the matter is dealt with. The only choice is to create an additional group of judges who have a specialist function in the area.

The objective and the manner in which the legislation has been crafted aims to ensure that we do not impose additional costs on the Exchequer. I must be realistic about it. As a result of the budget 2013 my Department will get an additional ¤7.5 million or ¤7.6 million to cover the cost of establishing the insolvency service, to pay salaries in the service, and for everything that comes with it, such as software and back-up facilities. Overall, in the context of the Department of Justice and Equality, for the same services in 2013 we will have ¤62.5 million less available than we had in 2012 and part of our funding allocation goes to the Courts Service. Therefore, it is important to see if we can set up the structure without incurring unnecessary expense both in the interests of taxpayers and to ensure that we maintain our budgetary position and comply with our Estimates during the course of the year. There are some really good qualified county registrars who can fill these positions if they apply for them. As I said, I would be surprised if there was not a surplus of applications. If it turns out that there are no appropriate people or not enough applications well so be it. We will then have to find the funding for a minimum number of six judges that we believe that we require.