The High Court allowed an appeal by debtor Philip Enright in a dispute over whether a revised personal insolvency proposal gave a creditor extra time to object. The court also allowed the appeal concerning his wife, Patricia Enright, described in the judgment as an interlocking debtor.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Baker on 31 May 2018, concerned the distinction under section 111A of the Personal Insolvency Acts between an amended proposal and a modification that corrects an error or clarifies an ambiguity. An amendment can extend the period for a single creditor to respond.
A personal insolvency practitioner sent a first proposed arrangement to ACC Loan Management DAC, acting through its loan management agent, Capita Asset Services (Ireland) Limited, on 7 December 2016. After a telephone discussion about inconsistencies in the proposal, a second version was prepared on 16 December. The first version gave conflicting terms of 24 and 72 months and contained uncertainty about security; those issues were corrected, and the creditor no longer relied on them as grounds for treating the second version as an amendment.
The remaining dispute concerned a jointly owned, unencumbered plot of 0.1322 hectares, valued at €6,000. The first proposal listed the plot’s value but did not explain its treatment in the relevant clause. The second added that the land was landlocked, had no road entrance, was unsaleable and was to be retained for the debtor’s horse enterprise.
ACC argued that this was a new proposal for the plot’s treatment, triggering an additional seven-day response period. The practitioner treated the proposal as approved after no response arrived within the initial 14-day period and issued a notice of outcome. ACC then applied under section 112(3), arguing that its response time had not expired. A Circuit Court judge accepted the creditor’s position in an order made on 24 May 2017.
Justice Baker concluded that the plot was not an arrangement asset intended to be made available to creditors. Its retention was already apparent from the first proposal, and the added text clarified that position without materially changing the proposal. The second version therefore contained a clarification under section 111A(5), not an amendment under section 111A(3).
The High Court allowed the appeals, finding the Circuit Court judge had been in error. The judgment did not itself approve the arrangement; it resolved the dispute about how the second proposal should be characterised and the resulting response period.