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

Amendment No. 16 inserts a new section to amend section 37 of the Personal Insolvency Act 2012, which relates to payments by a debtor who is the subject of a debt relief notice. It seeks to improve on the current text of the 2012 Act to make clearer what happens when a specified debtor's payment or payments under section 36(2) or 36(3) or section 37 amount to 50% or more of the specified qualifying debts concerned and when this happens. Under the amendment, on the date on which a single payment is made that amounts to 50% or more of the specified qualifying debts on the date on which the aggregate of payments made amounts to 50%, the debt relief notice ceases to have effect and the specified debtor stands discharged of the specified qualifying debt. In addition, the insolvency service is obliged to remove the information from the register of debt relief notices within three months of the date.

The amendment is linked to similar amendments I moved on Committee Stage, which provide for the removal of information from the insolvency register "within three months" rather than "without delay". The more precise requirement necessitated a precise date from which the three months began. The proposed amendment also makes clearer the fact that a single payment under section 36(2) or 36(3) that is worth 50% or more of the specified qualifying debts can lead to the debt relief notice ceasing to have effect. This is not entirely clear from the current wording of section 37(3) of the Act, which suggests that payments under section 37 can only be taken into account in calculating an aggregate figure.

Amendment No. 14 provides for the amendment of section 34(4)(b) of the Personal Insolvency Act 2012. It arises as a consequence of the proposed amendment to section 37. The amendment of section 34(5) is a technical amendment to remove the reference to "the approved intermediary concerned". The deletion is required for consistency with the rest of the 2012 Act as the approved intermediary has no role in the debt relief notice process at this stage.

Amendment No. 15, which provides for the amendment of section 36 of the Personal Insolvency Act, also arises as a result of the proposed amendment to section 37. It proposes to delete section 36(5) as its provisions overlap with section 37(2).