{"id":12426,"date":"2011-05-31T09:45:26","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T08:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/?p=12426"},"modified":"2019-11-11T09:51:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T09:51:59","slug":"irish-government-and-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/irish-government-and-debt\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish government and Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It offered to hit the ground running and the new Irish Government will in the near future be a hundred days in office. It is fully commited to execute a great deal of transitions and that being said maybe right now is the time to ask numerous basic questions as to exactly what it is providing in support of the ordinary citizen as distinct from what it is doing in relation to bankers, builders, NAMA and sovereign interest rates in its undoubtedly difficult efforts to meet its committed EU and IMF performance goals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Might it present a schedule for the \npublication of its legislative programme pertaining to personal \ninsolvency actions? We fully understand that the EU & IMF have made a\n deadline of March 2012 for fresh Irish personal insolvency laws to be \nin place. A plan of a month by month process for fast tracking the \nreform of bankruptcy laws and enacting new personal insolvency \nlegislation would provide clarity for individuals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Debt<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How long will\n it take the Law Reform Commission (LRC) to draft legislative proposals \nfor reform of bankruptcy law? Will the LRC need to go through the very \nsame prolonged strategy of study, research as well as extensive \nconsultation on bankruptcy before distributing a final document \n(combined with draft legislation) the way it has recently done in regard\n to unsecured personal debt – \u2018Personal Debt Management and Debt \nEnforcement\u2019, released in December 2010? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is the government \nconscious that the LRC provided draft legislation called \u2018Draft \nInsolvency Bill 2010\u2019 as an appendix to its final document in December \n2010? Could this particular legislation be fast tracked into law? So why\n will an incoming administration have to gradually and painstakingly \n\u2018review\u2019 the wonderful work completed by the LRC before deciding to \npropose and enact laws? Just what distinct skills is the government \nintending to bring to bear in such a overview, given that the \ndeliberations of the LRC engaged extensive expertise from both the \npublic and private sectors?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly what do government ministers \nindividually and collectively understand as \u2018personal debt forgiveness\u2019?\n Why should current government ministers repeat the mantra of the former\n discredited Fianna Fail \/ Greens government that government does not \nhave the authority to \u2018forgive\u2019 the debt of individual people? Compare \nand contrast recent utterances from the new Minister for Jobs, \nEnterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton with the ones from former \njustice minister Dermot Ahern in this regard. Do Irish government \nministers really assume that laws and regulations in other \njurisdictions, for example the UK Insolvency Act 1986, were introduced \nillegally and unconstitutionally and that the provisions included \ntherein in regard to Individual Voluntary Arrangements were not \nprimarily grounded on the idea of debt forgiveness? Why should Irish law\n differ from our European neighbours? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do government \nministers and indeed politicians of all positions and parties understand\n as the risk of \u2018moral hazard\u2019, when it comes to personal debt \nforgiveness? Why is the concern about \u2018moral hazard\u2019 a barrier to the \nlaunching of personal insolvency legislation? Or is the wooly knowledge \nof the idea of \u2018moral hazard\u2019 just an excuse for inaction? Has the \n\u2018moral hazard\u2019 danger in Ireland been benchmarked with the risks in \nother countries, specially the United kingdom? If it is not considered a\n concern in other places, what is it about Ireland that makes \u2018moral \nhazard\u2019 such a much talked about difficulty for government here? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why\n is the main focus in Ireland is on the business of secured personal \ndebt (e.g. mortgages and car HP) and is significantly less preoccupied \nwith unsecured personal debt (credit cards, overdrafts, personal loans)?\n The non court based debt settlement scheme mooted by the LRC would \nfacilitate insolvent citizens to address their unguaranteed debts in a \nway much like the tried and tested Individual Voluntary Arrangement \n(IVA) structure in the United kingdom. Why not bring in this legislation\n now? Why the delay until March 2012, the final target time established \nby the EU and the IMF?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The master of the High Court, Edmund \nHonahan has stated his feeling that people in the Department of Finance \ndo not have an understanding of the law (relating to insolvency) and \nthat people in the Department of Justice do not understand economics or \nfinance. Should this be in fact the case, what hope is there that \nacceptable personal debt insolvency legislation will ever see the light \nof day? Who\u2019s for a Department of Insolvency with knowledge provided by \nboth departments and from the private sector? Although there is not as \nyet a licensed expert insolvency qualification in Ireland chances are \nthat the legal and accountancy disciplines have ample specialist \nexperience to provide a strong system for the early implementation of \nthe non court based debt settlement scheme suggested by the LRC. The LRC\n study in personal insolvency employed and consulted with numerous \nspecialists from pertinent public and private sectors and yet it appears\n that the new government may sit on its hands until next year before \nenacting new personal insolvency legislation and changing bankruptcy \nlaw. Perhaps that is a little unfair after less than 100 days in office \nbut time will tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do lenders (banks, finance houses, other \ncreditors) chase debtors through the courts for judgments in relation to\n money owed which have already been written off in their books (and \nmaybe tax writeoffs availed of) and which have no realistic prospect of \nbeing satisfied by debtors who have no assets and no significant \ndisposable income? Do such lenders feel they have a legal or moral \naccountability (to their shareholders) to go after these kinds of bad \ndebts permanently? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do lenders seek to register (even more) \ncharges (often in respect of unsecured liabilities) on debtors\u2019 \nproperty, mainly family homes, where these types of assets are usually \nin negative equity and have no prospect of being in positive equity in \nthe future? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does the new government appreciate the resource \nrestrictions under which the Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS) \nhas been operating? Though it may be undeniably performing a good job, \nmoney and manpower constraints mean that the citizen must get in line \nfor a restricted program which basically comes down to just a initial \nstep in personal debt management. The program is taxpayer financed and \ncan scarcely expand or grow much more because of the government\u2019s policy\n of downsizing the public service. Perhaps now could be an opportune \ntime to encourage expertise from the private sector to provide private \ninsolvency solutions to the public along the lines of the governed and \nclearly thriving IVA and Debt Management Plan (DMP) services sectors in \nthe united kingdom.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does the new government appreciate the resource restrictions under which the Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS) has been operating? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-debt-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12440,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426\/revisions\/12440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}