I understand the urgency with which the Bill has to go through and the slowness that the Minister and his Department are up against regarding any piece of legislation. With that in mind, I will withdraw a consideration I had for Committee State to push for an amendment on section 10. However, I reiterate that I believe that in a situation where there are insufficient funds to meet the preferential creditors the Companies Act provides that where there are insufficient assets to meet all creditors in full they must be shared in equal proportions. In some cases this can be unfair to employees, who obviously should be paid their debts before tax is paid to the State. I take the Minister's point regarding the horrific situations when the employees have their tax deducted and it is not their fault, and I therefore feel that the employees should not be penalised. I make a plea to the Minister that when liabilities must be paid in equal proportions the rights of the employees be the first to be safeguarded. However, I will allow the section to go through.
Companies (Amendment) Bill, 1981: Committee and Final Stages.
I am obliged to the Senator for the view she takes. Perhaps I slightly misunderstood the point she was making earlier when she talked about the question of preferential payments being abated, or a pari passu arrangement. I can accept that if there is a very substantial amount due to the State, and unhappily it occurs that sums of up to £1 million are sometimes due to the State, it can create some difficulty for the employees. In practice, normally employees are very vigilant and I would not envisage a situation where the amount of wages or other sums due to them as a result of an abatement of this kind would be significant. If, for example, an employee was owed £200 and the State £1 million and there was a 20 per cent abatement, the employee's loss is relatively negligible. It may be significant enough to the individual but even to the individual it is relatively negligible. It is a point we could look at between now and further Bills which I hope to be able to introduce in the next six months or so.
Under this section there is the problem of PRSI non-payments by the employer, and the employees can be victimised for a very long period. When these contributions normally are made by the employers, they are supposed to be returned monthly, but in a number of these cases they are not returned monthly.
Unhappily that is the case. It would apply to income tax as well as to PRSI. The State can lose out quite substantially in regard to those amounts and indeed the employees on some occasions do not have their proper payments credited.
Does the Minister intend to do anything about that in amending legislation? It is difficult to know what can be done about it, but he should look at it.
I should not like to say just off the top of my head now in response to a question what exactly could be done, but I think it is something to which I should give some thought and we may be able to provide some means to cope with that problem which would not cause more problems.
I made some reference in my contribution to the registering of company accounts in the companies office. The Minister referred to it when he talked about disclosure and said he would take it up in the Fourth Directive. Does he mean this will be taken in the next Bill?
They will be taken in the Bill which will implement the Fourth Directive, which will be either the second or third next Bill relating to company law, which I hope we will have in the autumn. I cannot foresee it before then. The Bill for the Second Directive is ready. It is very long even though it is not of as much public interest as the one relating to the Fourth Directive. I hope that the Bill on the Second Directive will be circulated within a week or ten days.