Update from meeting with Willie Penrose T.D.

MikeL2007

Registered User
Messages
41
All,

I thought I'd share the outputs of a meeting I had with Willie Penrose T.D. at his clinic last Friday. My 2 key topics for discussion were:

The likelihood of the term reduction to 1 year and is so, when?
What impact the legislation will have on the Payment Order?

Term
In his own words, the term is 95% sure to be written into legislation.
From a labour perspective, this is a red letter issue - with both Brendan
Howlin and Joan Burton strongly behind it. There's also strong support
from Sinn Fein and the independents. As to when, "it will be
in legislation by Halloween".

Payment Order
The bill he drew up does not affect the Payment Order legislation. So he had
very little to add here. So I did some more digging through some contacts of mine,
one of them being a consultant who helped set up the ISI through his current
employer, a debt solutions consultancy.

The current legislation bankruptcy is 3 years with an income attachment
order of 5 years, so if an individual is earning more than the
“Reasonable Living expenses” he/she will be
discharged from bankruptcy after 3 years but will have to make a
contribution to the Official assignee for a further 2 years.
If he was not earning above the RLE’s the is generally no
attachment order so debtor is discharged after 3 years.

With the introduction of the reduction in term,
the debtor will be required to serve 6 months to close out,
so could be discharged at 24 months if it was today.

Finally and most importantly, Willie Penrose highlighted the need for
continued lobbying of your local TD's on the issue. The more weight
there is behind this, the better.

I would urge you all to consider this.

Kind regards
Mike
 
Nice work Mike and it's 100% consistent with anything I've got from him as well.
Not putting words in anyone's mouth but this looks like it was all agreed back in April when Labour went ape at Finance's attempt to scupper.
This attempt looks like it actually aided the speed of the process as it energised Labour to make it a "red line issue" whereas if Finance hadn't sneakily tried to scupper by getting Taoiseach and MOF to publicly downplay it, the bill might have gathered dust.

I think the only remaining risks are bad luck on timing (eg an early election called) or some procedural nonsense (I'd expect Penrose to be on guard for this second issue), some remaining lobbying (still possible but realistically this should have been done via submissions and that ship has sailed).
The banks are pretty neutral on the matter and wont rock the boat at this late stage.

I'm surprised however on his comments re payment order as his bill (see below) specifically deals with the matter.

http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/bills/2015/2415/b2415d.pdf

Agree, persistence with your local reps should continue
 
Great spot Silvio, particularly this reference in the bill:

"Subject to section 85A a bankruptcy subsisting on the coming into
operation of the Personal Insolvency (Amendment) Act 2015, where
the order of adjudication was made more than 1 year prior to that day,
shall stand discharged 3 months after that day unless the bankruptcy
has otherwise been discharged or annulled"

Fingers crossed
 
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