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Special Committee Family Law (Maintenance of Spouses and Children) Bill, 1975 debate -
Tuesday, 25 Nov 1975

SECTION 10.

Question proposed : " That section 10 stand part of the Bill."

Are we satisfied that this will work? All we are concerned with is that it will work in practice.

We think it will. It is our first experience of attachment in this country but it was drawn on the experiences of jurisdictions where attachment is in operation and, in so far as the various difficulties are relevant here, we have taken steps to avoid them. We are hoping it will work.

Have you talked with employers and trade unions?

There have been no formal consultations with either of these bodies.

I am a little worried about maintenance of records by employers. There is no provision in the Bill to ensure that employers maintain records. This is a common feature of most legislation, PAYE and the lot. I am preoccupied with the question of companies as such going into liquidation and money being due in respect of a maintenance order. I presume that they would have priority in any liquidation proceedings. It is a point I would ask the Minister to look at because all sorts of queer anomalies can develop when one is serving such a maintenance order on employers. If the definition of " employer " were changed to " employers " would a maintenance order apply to a second employer? I would suggest to the Minister that for Report Stage he would have regard to the water-tight section of the Redundancy Payments Act whereby employers are obliged to pay.

That raises two points. The numbers of maintenance debtors who would be employed by any particular firm are unlikely to exceed a handful except in the case of a very large firm indeed. I do not know that the keeping of records by the firm is important. The main place to have records is in the District Court office. There will, of course, be full and complete records there. In later sections there are obligations on employers to make available information and to notify the court when maintenance debtors take up or leave their employment. There are certain sanctions attached to failing to do so. I think the presence of those sanctions would be an adequate assurance that records would be kept. On a liquidation, there will be no priority for maintenance orders other than any priority that might attach to the wages to which the attachment order would refer——

They have a higher priority——

Wages would have a certain priority under ordinary law; I do not think there would be any priority other than that. We will have a look at the Bill again in that regard.

It can be known that an employer, and indeed many employers, adopt moral attitudes in relation to family rights which is no business whatever of theirs, but it can arise in relation to personnel records that if a man has a maintenance order against him and it becomes known that he has extreme marital problems, employers have availed of such a personnel record to cast unnecessary and entirely intolerable aspersions on that man's employment capacity and I am a bit preoccupied with it because for the first time in the history of the State District Court clerks will be writing to employers saying that Mr. X has a maintenance order against him. I am all in favour of that law being there but I am very concerned that no employer should be in a position whereby he may abuse that circumstance to say: " We no longer consider Johnny X to be a suitable employee." At a later stage of the Bill we should consider inserting some indication in the Bill that no action whatsoever may be taken by any employer in relation to the conditions of employment of any employee in relation to such a maintenance order other than paying the money to the maintenance creditor.

With employers today there is a far more enlightened attitude.

It is a reflection on employers.

I think firms now are employing social workers to deal with problems like this. They are aware that such problems exist. I think that the narrow minded attitude, if it is not dead, is certainly dying.

Dismissal by virtue of the existence of a maintenance order would very soon provoke action by the trade unions.

And the conditions of employment law.

I would agree with Deputy O'Brien that employers nowadays are far more enlightened. If they have to sign the type of thing that Deputy Desmond has in mind, it would be a gratuitous reflection on employers.

Question put and agreed to.
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