“The details of all non-performing loans acquired by NAMA will be available for scrutiny on a Public Register, including the names of the creditors, the price paid by the taxpayer for the loans and the actions taken by NAMA to recover the loans. Persons that have defaulted on loans acquired by NAMA will be banned from ever purchasing any asset from NAMA” Fine Gael manifesto in General Election 2011
The Personal Insolvency Act 2012 was signed by President Higgins on 26th December 2012, and all we are now awaiting is the soporific justice minister to decide an Establishment Day and sign the commencement orders. But it looks as if it will be just a few short months before heavily indebted people will have new and more humane solutions to their plight.
Already on here, the contrast in treatment of NAMA developers who skip over to the UK for a one-year bankruptcy with bankruptcy under the new Irish regime, has been reported.
Now, we are going to have the spectacle of the name-and-shame mentality being deployed against those seeking personal insolvency orders under the new Act. Contrast that with the commitment in the Fine Gael manifesto to the “Public Register” of NAMA developers which would show the billions that the people of this country are shouldering as a result of the decision of the Government to bail out the banks and create NAMA. That commitment has been abandoned with the Government muttering something about data protection and rights to confidentiality.
Hypocrisy.
Two contrasting news items in today’s IT about bankruptcy. The first involves a businessman from Clonard, Co Wexford, adjudicated a bankrupt in July 2011, who was taken to Mountjoy Prison for contempt of court after refusing to co-operate with the official assignee. The second concerns a Dublin solicitor who was refused bankruptcy in the UK and seeking to have this refusal overturned in order to avoid being declared bankrupt in Ireland.
It’s only hypocritical if you accept the premise that the same rules and laws should apply to everyone equally.
It’s very clear that the ruling classes in this country consider themselves and their friends to be above the laws which apply to everyone else. This applies to bankruptcy and insolvency as well as everything else.
Nowhere is this made clearer than in the Personal Insolvency Act itself. The act is divides along classical class lines. Working class debtors are subjected to harsh Debt Relief Notices. Middle class debtors are subjected to stringent Personal Insolvency Arrangements.
And Upper class debtors, with potentially unlimited amounts of unsecured debt, are subjected to the most lenient treatment of all in the form of Debt Settlement Arrangements. They cannot be removed from their home or possessions, no matter how grand. Their lifestyle, cost of living, and even the cost of sending their “dependent” children to university must all be protected first before their creditors can get a slice. Most importantly of all, the professionals in this class can continue to practice as if they weren’t bankrupt at all– sorry, I mean insolvent.
I suspect that the probability of writedowns under the PIA act will be inversely proportional to the amount owed. Expect middle class PIAs to be squeezed by the banks for the guts of the next decade to make up for the DSAs early Christmases.
I should be grateful if would you cite the relevant portions of the Act that give rise to these particular consquences, please. I’m having difficulty wrapping my head around most of it.
soporific, probably not. Torpid, that’s the law in general for you.
I am not one to defend the Irish govt, or indeed contradict NWL’s wise words, but the Irish people need to look at themselves a bit on this one.
The habit, or national pastime, of deference to authority, combined with unquestioning acceptance of anything from the legal profession is at the heart of the problem too.
Take your battle to the bank, use the power of (your own) emotion, take no shit whatsoever. After all isn’t that what the developers emerging from bankruptcy are doing?… and though I never thought I’d say this, fair balls to them.
It is not Irish people against unstoppable forces of nature, it is Irish people against shleeveen nasty minded politicians/bankers armed with lawyers.
And guess which side is bending over holding its ankles?
Hypocrisy resides in the notion that Ireland is a nation of independent minded rebels, as much as it resides in the actions politicians/bankers.
Are you all waiting for your mammy to speak up for you or what?