Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill, particularly section 14(c), which removes the requirement that an insolvent debtor is only eligible under the Act to apply for the insolvency court review if his or her home mortgage was already in arrears before 1 January 2015.The amendment removes that from the Bill, which is very welcome.

I will not go over what other Members of the House have said. However, I agree with everything that Senator Seery Kearney said about the budgetary norms, as laid down, being completely out of date. One could not agree with these norms and the Minister of State must personally intervene.

Senator Martin complimented the former Ministers, Alan Shatter and Frances Fitzgerald, for starting out on the road to this insolvency Bill for which I compliment them. I was a member of the finance committee during that period, when many people wrote to us about their cases. We heard about harrowing situations where people were in ferocious debt and losing their houses, which led to family break-ups and so on. It was an horrific time. I am sure there will more such cases after the pandemic we are going through at the moment. This Bill is very welcome at this point in time. I hope it will bring some finality to the predicaments in which some people find themselves.

I would like to raise an issue that is not mentioned in the Bill but is one that I have raised in the House on a number of occasions. What happens if self-employed people and sole traders who employ people lose their business for some reason or other and must close down? We saw such cases during the financial crash, we are seeing them now and we will see more of them because of the pandemic that is taking place. When such a business closes down, there is a requirement that the employer must pay two weeks' redundancy per year for each member of staff. It is right that staff should get their redundancy. I have no problem at all with that. If the employer is unable to pay the two weeks' redundancy per year, he or she can plead inability to pay. In such circumstances, the State steps in to pay the redundancy to the employees. However, the Department of Social Protection then goes after the employer for the two weeks' redundancy per year. If he or she cannot pay, the money is eventually taken from his or her estate, which means the family home.

Given that this legislation is about protecting the family home, I think the Minister of State should consider this matter. I am preparing a Private Members' Bill that would exclude the family home from any charges that would be brought by the State due to an inability to pay the two weeks' redundancy per year to members of staff. Many people have lost their businesses and the State has had to pay the redundancy. While the State has not put any charges on any estate so far, a day of reckoning will come. There are many cases of families having a sick child or whatever. Such families may always have felt that when the parents died, the family home would be there for this particular son or daughter, thereby giving them a sense of security in respect of the family member concerned. This area should be looked at. Maybe it could be included in this Bill at some stage.