The Gazette 1975

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.

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

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