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and negotiate sales as best he can. He does not, as you
can well imagine, relish the thought of having goods
left on his own hands indefinitely because a sale is
boycotted, especially if the seizure is of livestock which
require constant attention, feeding, working and per-
haps even milking.
1 will spare you a recital of the other hazards run by
the sheriff if he over-seizes or trespasses mistakenly in
the search for seizable goods. The whole law relating
to sheriffs is bristling with technicalities, and pitfalls—
the implications of the possible bankruptcy of the
debtor being yet another one of them.
After all this, you may begin to appreciate why
you do not always get the service from your friendly
local sheriff that you feel entitled to expect. The fact
of the matter is that the machinery available to him is
totally antiquated and creaking at the joints. The
system was devised for an era when wealth was
measured in property and tangible assets, whereas to-
day, wealth is largely in the form of income—income
which the sheriff has no power to attack. Put another
way, it was devised for an era when virtually all trading
was for cash or barter amongst the generality of the
population and when hire-purchase was unthought of
and credit-trading restricted to the monied and credit-
worthy few. The sheriff system probably worked
quite efficiently then, but it just cannot work efficiently
in the altered circumstances of today. The only extant
Irish authority on sheriff law is "Dixon & Gilliland",
published in 1887 and never thought worth republishing.
In practice, therefore, if a sheriff is active and
even moderately successful in enforcing judgment debts
in Ireland today, it is largely by a process of bluff. He
does this by moral pressure and by threatening seizure
sufficiently convincingly and menacingly to lead people
to believe that he will take measures which he very
seldom could carry out, if put to the point. Of course,
to sustain this bluff, he must now and again go the
whole hog, by carrying out a few outright seizures
every year. For this, he will, if he has sense, pick his
cases carefully, choosing only those where he knows
the debtor could pay and has goods readily available
for seizure which are also readily saleable. And if
possible he will choose those cases which will attract a
good deal of local publicity, while at the same time,
for the good of his own skin, will attract the minimum
of sympathy for the victim. The bluff must be backed
up by the occasional action or it will be seen through
for what it is.
Properly applied, this method can bring fairly
satisfactory results without causing undue hardship. It
is the method I use and an analysis of the Decrees
lodged with me over the past few years that any "Nulla
Bona" returns amount to as little as only 17J% of all
decrees lodged. This is probably rather better than
average, and I can only attribute it to the fact that I
have always paid good deal of attention to the Sheriff
function, that I am blessed with good staff, and perhaps
gifted with a "poker face" to facilitate the bluffing.
As I had occasion to say to the Irish Credit
Managers' Association at their Seminar some months
ago, there is my view an utter recklessness, amounting
often to prodigality, in the manner in which credit has
been extended in this country in modern times. Allied
with this is the failure of business and finance houses to
set up any realistic and worthwhile machinery for
assessing credit worthiness. This must be so because,
after 20 years experience 1 see the same defaulters
cropping up time and again in my Execution Book. In
the past 12 months alone, I have counted fifteen names
each of which has cropped up four, five or more times
as defaulters. I have one man on my books who has
defaulted two banks and five H.P. firms, as well as
several private creditors to my certain knowledge—
and in quite a big way too. How did he get all that
credit?
One available device which 1 can never recollect
H.P. Companies or the Credit Managers of business
firms making use of is the "Sheriff's Office Search."
For a fee of 35p this will show up any decrees, all
currently held against any named individual or firm
in the county. Admittely it has the defect that it only
shows those currently held, and not how many have
been lodged in the past or what has happened to them.
But at least it is some protection and at 35p very
cheaply bought. In my experience this device is utilised
almost exclusively by the A.C.C. and the Building
Societies, and very occasionally by the Banks.
Merchants never use it. Do their solicitors ever think
of advising them to do so? Hire Purchase Companies,
who form close on 25% of all default judgement
creditors in my county very rarely do. On the other
hand, if I unadvertently seize a car or a washing mach-
ine in which they have an interest, they are apt to
squeal very loudly indeed and to threaten me with all
sorts of dire measures.
Before
attaching
too
much
blame
to
the
sheriffs therefore, credit managers and controllers and
their legal advisers should examine their own con-
sciences. If they continue to extend virtually unlimited
credit to people who have not the means to repay, they
cannot reasonably blame the Sheriff if he fails to en-
force their decrees.
No matter how diligent sheriffs may be— and some
are undoubtedly more diligent than others—they can-
not improve on the machinery, they can only use it
to the best of their abilities.
1 have taken the trouble to study at first
hand the new Enforcement of Judgements system
in Northern Ireland which certainly represents a
very considerable advance on the former system there
—but then that was even more primitive and
antiquated than ours, as at least our 1926 legislation
achieved a certain advance. The Minister for Justice
has lately spoken on the subject to the Credit Managers
Association and I recommend any of you who are
interested to study his speech on that occasion (31st
October 1974) which was extensively reported in the
papers.
Ultimately any improvement in the enforcement
system is a matter for Government and Legislation, not
for the sheriffs. It is also a matter for people like you,
who are free to lobby and bring pressure to bear.
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