Richard O'Donoghue: Supports Insolvency Amendment, Calls for Protections
Richard O'Donoghue spoke about an amended regulation on civil justice and insolvency between the European States and said he would not oppose the amendment. He urged stronger domestic measures to prevent repeat insolvency, stop asset stripping and protect small businesses hit by inflation, revenue interest and penalties.
Amendment stance
He said the amended regulation ensures the importance of the establishment of civil justice between the European States and confirmed he would not oppose the change, describing it as an amendment that needs to be made.
Concerns about repeat insolvency
He raised repeated insolvency as a particular problem, citing companies that enter insolvency multiple times, reopen under another name or use sister companies to move assets before winding up, and said protections are needed to expose those patterns of behaviour.
Small businesses under pressure
He highlighted the impact on small firms, pointing to inflation, employment and running costs, and the burden of revenue interest and penalties. He argued small businesses often cannot secure bank funding and deserve targeted consideration to see whether they can be saved.
Call for domestic regulation and enforcement
He urged the minister to introduce mechanisms so that directorships and company trails reveal repeat operators and rogue behaviour, and to ensure domestic rules complement the updated European approach to insolvency.
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I will not be opposed to this amended regulation that ensures the importance of the establishment of civil justice between the European States. One thing in the insolvency in this country is that we have got to look at how many businesses were forced into insolvency under inflation, how many businesses were forced into insolvency under revenue, interest and penalties in this country. We are talking small businesses as well as large businesses. How many companies went into insolvency more than once, twice, three times, four times, five times, and each time they open back up again under another name, or they have a sister company that they removed the assets out of into another company, and then they go insolvency and they start all over again. Protections need to be put in place, Minister, to make sure that if companies are like that, the directorships of those companies will show its own trail across, you will see the same people in the same companies coming back. We need to make sure there is regulation in place to deal with that. In the case of small businesses that are going into insolvency, under the interest and penalties of revenues, they should also be looked at to see can we save them, because small businesses have inflation costs, they have employment costs, running costs, and they will not be able to sustain or have the ways and means of getting the funding from their banks to keep them going, because they look at them as only small identity or non-viable to a community. But they are very, very important to community and small businesses are. So as I said, Minister, I will not be opposing this. It is an amendment that needs to be made. It needs to make sure that insolvency in the European eyes is updated for all the European states, but we need to look at home, Minister, and we need to make sure that we have things put in place to make sure that we have things in place for the rogue operators that go into insolvency more than two and three times to make sure that we have some way of a mechanism to deal with them. Thank you.
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