Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 19 November 2013
492. Deputy Terence Flanagan asked the Minister for Justice and Equality if he will provide estimates for 2014 and 2015 of the number of persons that will have entered into personal insolvency arrangements with the Insolvency Service of Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48963/13]
View answer493. Deputy Terence Flanagan asked the Minister for Justice and Equality the number of cases that have been handled by the Insolvency Service of Ireland since September 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48965/13]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 492 and 493 together.
The Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI) is currently processing a number of applications and has stated that, in the interest of confidentiality it will not be providing details or breakdowns of number of applications for the various debt relief solutions received or being processed at this time. The ISI fully intends to provide quarterly statistics once a statistically meaningful number of applications have been processed.
Currently it is not possible to provide the Deputy with estimates of the number of persons that will have entered into personal insolvency arrangements for the years 2014 and 2015. During the course of the Personal Insolvency Bill's passage through the Oireachtas, I originally indicated provisional estimates of applications in one full year of operation of the three new debt relief solutions to be 15,000 for Debt Settlement Arrangements and Personal Insolvency Arrangements and 3,000 to 4,000 Debt Relief Notices.
I understand that there is a good level of activity and cases are at different stages of progress through the ISI's system. The first Protective Certificate was granted by Monaghan Circuit Court on 21 October 2013 and two more were issued by Dublin Circuit Court on 14 November 2013.
It is expected that the number of applications will increase over time but as these are real time applications, it is not possible, nor would it be helpful, to speculate on projected numbers of applications or arrangements for 2014 or 2015. The ISI intends to commence issuing regular statistical reports in 2014 which will include the number of applications that have been made for debt relief arrangements.
In the interim, the ISI has added a statistics page to its website (www.isi.gov.ie) which provides details of key information such as the number of approved practitioners, information requests to the ISI and associated pertinent information. The statistics page is updated on a monthly basis.
