I can see his point of view but it’s still open to abuse.

Grandma’s ring? Massive sentimental value? Pass it on as inheritance early.

Not just jewellery. Stretched mercs, fur coats and solid gold top hats too.

And who in there right mind is going to declare valuables ?? O yeah here’s grandma’s ring it’s worth xx amount just take it …. Yeah right !!!

I think it needs a common sense approach it should put engagement and wedding rings a different section rather than lumping all jewellery together and then in different bands according to worth obviously if they are worth €20k then you should have to give them up but if they are worth €2k then you shouldn’t.

I dont get the upset about this …it doesn’t makes sense that a person trying to say they can’t afford to pay 15,000 euro but then have jewellery valued at 10k? Also I can see what the minister is saying having exemptions leads to abuses and if you have a engagment ring/wedding ring exemption you get into arguing over when was it bought when was the proposal was it given at the time etc …

Its important to realise that debt which is rightfully written off for someone who cannot repay it does not disappear but is lumped on to the people who are paying their debts through higher banking costs lower interests rates etc… why should debt compliant individuals have to pick up the tab for people who get into 20,000k of credit card debt? In fact the debt that is being written off might have come about because they purchased an expensive engagement ring …so what you are saying is that they should be allowed get the expensive ring for free?

Can we not sell the government instead? They are of no use to Irish People. They are extremely helpful to the Germans and corporations. I propose we sell current crop of TDs.

This issue has me of divided opinion. In one respect people got themselves into their own financial mess during the boom…you can blame the banks and government all you like, no one forced your hand to sign the dotted line on mortgage and loan applications. I would say peer pressure had more to do with than anything else.

I can think of a friend of mine who landed an inheritance in 2006 which was about two thirds of what the house he bought was worth….fair enough getting a mortgage to cover the other half. However, he insisted on getting another 200k on top of that to do the house up to a very luxurious standard. Now he is in financial trouble because he got greedy and wanted everything there and then. I know he is not the only one who did this, a lot of people took on extra loans to have their new houses ready to move in. I think these people should have to pay their debts off however they can, selling assets etc.

On the other hand I really sympathise with people being forced to sell off items that have high sentimental value…jewelry and such that deceased relatives may have given them or wedding rings. Unfortunately it would probably be pretty hard to manage this because you would obviously get some people saying many different items are of high sentimental value in order to keep them.

Personal Jewellery of sentimental value should not be considered. I’m sure the majority of those looking for debt relief have tried to sell material things such as cars,furniture white goods etc..To even think that it has come to such a low level is quite pitiful.

Many people bought a house with the intention of paying in full but so many couples lost their jobs.With unemployment at a record high, Mortgages and debt levels will spiral. An awful mess.

One problem is that if people are forced to sell their jewelry who are they going to sell it to given the level of indebtedness due to negative equity in this country there will be a lot of wedding engagement rings being sold outside of the cash for gold who is going to buy and who would want a stranger’s second hand ring? This is Fine Gael hackery at its best. Well help you if and only if we can screw you. It is a law to protect the banks and money lenders and not the people. This government once again show that they don’t care if we end up living on the street, starving and worked to debt and death as long as the banks bond holders get their money.

If they let the jewelry off the hook Sean Quinn would look like Mr.T.

Think for the genuine thousands who have jewellery of sentimental value and cars to get to and from work then the limits have to change. We cannot forget that Enda Kenny said that this was “a problem not of our making” So if this country has any grace towards the hundreds of thousands of citizens for having lost life savings, and being ‘sold’ back into “private sufferance” once more for decades to come, then if they wish to call themselves public representatives they’d best start living up to that.

Assets are assets. You can’t claim that you can’t afford to pay back your debts when you have assets that have value on the open market.

How would you like it if you had your own business and a person who claimed they couldn’t afford to pay you back was sitting on a big pile of their Granny’s valuable jewellery?

This has nothing to do with bondholders or failed banks or any of that rubbish – it’s simply one facet of the attempt to bring our insolvency legislation into the 21st Century.

Not a problem for me as my engagement ring, plus other stuff, was stolen by burglars years ago. Whatever you have, some b******d’s after it.

i think that if there is a debt owed on the jewellery, fair enough it must be sold…however engagement and wedding rings plus inherited jewellery should be exempt as this has much more personal value than any money could compensate

When you consider the €30k weddings and amount of trips made to New York and Antwerp to purchase €5k+ diamonds over the past decade and remember the braying “had it valued at 12k here!” it’s hard to feel any sympathy when those Celtic Tiger baubles need to be sold to cover their debts!

I don’t think that people should get off with debt anyway. 20K of credit card debt is the reason we had so much bling in the Tiger years, people spending more than they earn. With a mortgage at least you could argue you needed a house, but credit card debt was for spending.

If the minister doesn’t do this, somebody with plenty of assets who doesn’t want to pay back his or her debts can buy an expensive car – were there no limit on a personal car – and spend as much as he, or she, likes on jewellery, exempting that.

So someone who overspent during the boom but is paying it back – or not – can now write it off with purchases of Jewellery, or a car. In fact – without this limit – you could use a credit card in the next few weeks to buy thousands of euro worth of jewellery and then write it off.

Shatter specifically mentioned items like engagement rings, which is not the same as ‘personal jewellery’ s mentioned in the poll.

A morally bankrupt statement, from a morally bankrupt man and a morally bankrupt government.

Sell it all.. Otherwise whats to stop someone buying an expensive ring before applying… And I’m sure there are some people out there that would do it!

An asset is an asset

Pay back 10% of the 20000 over 4 years and you’re clear. That’s all your property sold in a firesale would be worth anyway. Dignity remains intact and debt is paid. Everyone is happy…..

2 to 3 items of personal jewellery per person, Wedding ring, Engagement ring, sentimental piece up to a total value of €2000 should be exempt. Anything above that value should be hocked asap.

What is it with this Government that people whose lives have been ruined through no fault of their own have to be destitute before they can get the help they need to try to get their lives back on track.

It seems that every thing they is intentionly geared to widening the gap bdtween the rich and the poor. So Alan Shatters comment and expressed sentiment is par for the course.

When will someone take this Government to task regarding our Constitutional right to be treated with dignity. Because if people are forced to sell sentimental items in order to secure help, then the State is in effect robbing them of their dignity.

Our forefathers would be totally ashamed of us for even debating this nonsense.Tell these corrupt gangsters to go to hell,stand together people and don,t be so cowardly.

There is a certain developer who lives out the Maynooth direction who i still see driving around in his range rover from time to time and still has his huge mansion. If i was bankrupt I wouldn’t be driving around in a range rover. How is It that these developers still manage to live the lifestyle that they had before Nama stepped in?

If the jewellery in question is a ‘Mood ring’ , it is currently showing anger.

do you get much these days for costume jewellery? as that’s what most of us have left , thoses of us in debt the real stuff gone long ago

An Open Letter to Ireland’s Monster of Justice, Alan Shatter, TD.

A sign displayed at a small garage I passed on the way to my office.
I ask, “mechanical or personal?”

Dear Minister

I haven’t had my morning coffee yet – hopefully you don’t mind me having one, that is, if such luxury isn’t against the necessary “austerity” measures. No, it’s not bought in a coffee shop. It will be a spoonful of instant, in a mug of milk, heated in a microwave.

But I have reached my office, having passed the sign above at a local garage. You know, it might very well be that both “mechanical” and “personal” apply! But, let me tell you about my office. It’s located beside a small family-run restaurant. Sadly, it closed this week. I can’t reach the owner, a good friend, on the phone. Hope he’s OK. Never mind. I now pass the door next to my office, an office now occupied by the person who had the courage to secure the credit to build our town’s first shopping centre, where my office is located. He has lost it all now, because income from his tenants has collapsed and they can’t pay rent and “the banks” have stepped in to claim the property. They appointed a non-Irish property management company. Incidentally, an Irish firm was first to tender to do the same service for the same cost but were rejected. Reminds me of absentee British landlords, but let’s not get too “hysterically historic”, now that we Irish are “European”.

I am working at my desk. The young IT woman from another office, next door, passes. We greet each other through my open door. She informs me today is her last day. She’s leaving for Dublin or London. She’s “not going to do the whole emigration thing of moving to Australia”. But, she has decided to leave because all her friends have left. By the way, she works for one of the shopping centre’s retail tenants – you know, the one’s whose income has collapsed. I express my grief that yet another young person believes she should leave. I wish her well.

I’m trying to sell advertising to promote our county, arguably our country’s best naturally-endowed tourism county that could produce hundreds of jobs and attract overseas money into our local economy. I am dependent entirely on advertising revenue. A couple of years ago I could have sent a sales staff upstairs to another office to collect a 4-figure cheque from a major property developer to help promote our county. That office is long closed. The Family Mediation Service now occupies its grand offices. In case you don’t, know that’s the State-funded organisation that helps couples separate. It’s quite confounding how much support our capitalist State gives to help couples separate and how very little it provides couples who need help. By the way, I should know. My own marriage recently collapsed, largely, but not exclusively, of course, due to business financial pressures. I suppose in a system that values money over people, two households are “better” than one. I mean, two washing machines, two electric bills, two rents or mortgages etc etc. And, as for the children, don’t forget we in Ireland will soon be asked to vote on a constitutional change that gives the State a higher authority than the family unit when it comes to the care of children. The propaganda is already calling it “Children First”!

Ah! The shop-owner, the employer of the young woman about to leave, has just walked passed to her office. We greet each other. I decide not to ask: “How’s things?” Maybe later she will offer to say. She used to a while back, but has grown silent of late.

Breakdown? Would you blame anyone? Broken! More accurately, Shattered!

Which reminds me: I heard that you, our honourable Minister of Justice, Alan Shatter, has just declared? That married couples, in debt, should sell their personal jewellery, including their engagement rings, to pay their debts. I don’t apologise, but I feel incensed and disgusted by this statement. Firstly, you are supposed to be minister of “justice”. Now, being a Jew, [yes, we have one in our parliament] one would expect you might be familiar with the fact that justice must include righteousness and mercy. I would proffer that to suggest that a married couple should sell something as precious as their engagement ring to pay a “bust and already bailed-out bank” is utterly repulsive.

It is a fallacy to suggest that the majority of couples went out on the binge to buy the most expensive, extravagant engagement rings. I also would have expected you, Mr Shatter, especially, to have some personal appreciation of how oppressive systems, often imperial, degrade society, the family and the individual. Next, will you suggest that we bring our children and melt them down to turn the fat from their bodies into soap and to extract lead from their fillings? They are, after all, the result of our engagement rings. We could then sell the soap so that our over-salaried, over-pensioned, over-compensated, government ministers can look well-scrubbed up in Brussels. Hasn’t our Prime-minister, Enda, recently developed a lovely sheen!

Many of us responsibly had children based on anticipated income, which simply no longer exists. Many of us got married, often with very limited means, and now, maybe decades later, see our marriages collapse due, substantially, to pressure from a collapsed economy. Meanwhile, at all costs the government guarantees to pay absentee, anonymous, bond-holders and financial institutions with the sweat of this and the next generations and commits to extracting all the money it possibly can from hard-pressed citizens.

Surely, it is time, instead of dissolving our marriages, selling our engagement rings, banishing and evaporating our children, we said “Stop” to this pillaging of our country, communities and families. The banking sector has collapsed. Based on credit, instead of real wealth development, it can be never be nothing other than dysfunctional. [Do you recall The Year of Jubilee, Mr Shatter?]. We are a nation, built on society, comprising communities of families and individuals. As a business person I say: People are more important than any institution, especially any that suggests we should sell our engagement rings to provide funds for bust banks. Such a suggestion I find totally offensive, reprehensible and unclean. My Shatter, solely to try to help you understand the depth of disgust I feel for you statement, may I suggest that instead you should go and copulate with a pig! But, I fear, Minister, you have lost all concept of justice.

It’s a question of class. Shatter doesn’t seem to be querying the fact that NAMA is paying several developers who owe millions to it (in one case at least, billions) €200,000 a year (around €3,700 a week).
For this Fine Gael/Labour government, as for the Fianna Fáil/Green government before it, to have lost your work means to be at the mercy of their hatred and contempt. To be one of the boys means to be cuddled and minded.

Maybe We should pull Gold teeth, Sell hair and Human skin could be used to make Lamp shades. Ogens could be sold to third parties for cash.

Okay it’s all or nothing here. Do you want people to pay their debts or get off scot free? If you can’t afford to keep a ring buy it back when you can. Can we have one discussion here without some tard going on about banks & bondholders. This is quite clearly not about that. It’s about people getting relief on their own personal debt. Minister shatter is not sending out the bailiffs nationwide to collect everybody’s jewellery to be put into a pool to pay off the ECB. People with debt that they cannot pay have assets regardless of sentimental value must sell these assets first in order to get help. It’s straightforward and simple.

So Alan Shatter wants us to hand over our precious memories in gold and silver to the spate of Cash for Gold kiosks which have sprung up all over the country ?nBy the way Alan is there any regulation on this industry are the sources of goods checked etc ?

The question is really about how far a family should be forced to fall before they are considered to have hit the bottom. A related dilemma is whether a charity should help a family who are in financial difficulties to maintain a semblence of their recent lifestyle. The answer in fairness to all citizens would be to define a minimum standard of living in terms of house, possessions, transport requirement and not to support anything more but crucially not to allow retribution by financial institutions to leave a family with less. While this could be considered unfair by those living with less than the defined level, they too would benefit from the rule if theyever flew high and got shot down.

What about the government appointing a special ‘Debtors Dentist’ ? assigned the task of forcibly extracting gold fillings.. A similar approach could be taken towards body piercings …. ;)

What planet is Shatter on! People who are going insolvent are not choosing to do it for the fun of it! They are doing it because banks ruined the country!!!!!! A vehicle valued at 1,200 euros on these pot hole roads get real. People who are in this kind of trouble have probabley already lost their credit cards and credit worthyness. They may feel isolated and have zero respect in the community more than likely have already sold off anything of value just to survive anyway. Each case has to be examined individually not wound up in one. Someone in the middle of Dublin can survive without a car someone in the heart of Kerry with NO public transport cannot. Shatter and those in government should talk to the ground floor i.e talk to someone who understands and is not living in cloud cuckoo land!!!!

the fact of the matter is this no big developer is going to use this to get rid of debts, they have the money(or owe enough money) to do a better deal and keep some standard of living. This is for the poor, the people that can be hounded, And people who agree with this should remember” there but for the grace of god go I “. It is the ordinary joe soap who will be humiliated and degraded by this useless goverment, kicking people just enough to keep them down and afraid.

Mark how on earth can you make a statement like that? Would you reread YOUR OWN POST of just a few moments ago!

Eoin so u would have been better off sitting back doing nothing during the”Celtic tiger” years.so much for trying to get ahead in Ireland ,so much for trying to get something to pass on to our children.thats never going to happen here as the gov.will get back all u worked hard for before u get to benefit from it.its disgusting .wont b recommending to anyone to live here if they want to make some thing of their lives .

Why not get them to sell children too!!!! People had them during the boom and now can’t afford them and that’s just not good enough. They’re a valuable asset and I’m sure there’s a factory somewhere making clothes, runners etc who’d pay a good price for them. The money could be used to pay off debts and keep the financial Inquistioners happy.
If the Inquistioners think this is too harsh, we could strip them of everything they own, get them to take up residence in empty caves around the country, with a start up kit of a sling shot and two sticks to make fire. Unless of course that’s not making them suffer enough.
I am so sad, tired and weary of some peoples need to make people suffer more then they are already and the masochistic joy taken in it.

There should be total jewellery allowance – let’s say €2k . Simples :)

I think all jewellery should be sold except wedding and engagement rings. The rings are a sign of unity between a couple, and something that is a token of this unity should not be taken away. However, proof of purchase incl. a date or photograph or something along the lines should be provided as we all know someone will purposely buy a new epensive ring in order to avoid handing in the cash alternative.

Instead of bailing out the bankers we should have been bailing out the mortgage holders.

This may be unpalatable to some, but it is undeniable that it would have left the country in better shape. They’re even doing it in the US (aka home of capitalism) in return for avoiding expensive investigations into bank malpractice (a double win).

All this stuff about hocking jewellery, gathering up the pennies that have slipped down behind the sofa etc is just a sideshow.

Not family heir looms or wedding/engagement rings, that’s just wrong. Everything else yes.

Along with the Prada bag and that pair of Christian Louboutin shoes that you picked up in BT .

Think about it. If jewelry is exempt, it only encourages the use of jewelry to shield assets. Wedding bands (2) engagement rings (2) should be exempt, as well as any silver spoon acquired through the birth of a child.

You cant pick through someones items they already own how will that work ?? will someone come into the house and say well…. you have a 400 euro lap top and each of your children have one so take them all off you and leave just one in the family.

Is the whole family to stand in line whilst some stranger goes through your possessions??? And will that stranger stand at the grave side when a parent is left alone to pick up the pieces and say

” Well you did use the credit card you should not have got all that”
“I Know you were working at the time and the banks were falling all over themselves to give you the credit cards to get the interest”
“When you lost your job why did you still use it when you could to pay the ESB? and put food on the table?”

No this is crazy…Its not about what you bought with money when you had it. Its about how to deal with the situation now and help people to cope.

I used to debt collect for a finance company years ago in the UK and what was used at that time by people who had unsecured debt they found they could not cope with was called an “Administration order”

They had to apply to the court and list all their creditors and the total could not exceed a given amount. A mortgage was not allowed to be included. This was also knicknamed “the poor mans bancrupcy” A date was set in court and the creditors informed so they could attend if they wished.

The court means tested the applicant and an agreed monthly amount over an agreed number of years was set to be paid into the court. This was then distributed between the creditors each month until the length of time the court had set ended. Each creditor got some money back and had to right off the remainder thus stopping the persistent hounding at the door of creditors looking for money.

This is not about the massive debt and assets developers used to own, still own etc its about the average family trying to survive without being pushed over the edge. The government has a duty of care to find an acceptable solution to help. Living in fear of who is going to knock on the door next whilst trying to give your children “normality” is what a lot of families are trying to do.

The banks get bailed out and the normal citizen doesn’t get helped.

Want the votes then get something in place that does help. Think again and come up with a better solution.

Another argument for gay marriage which Shatter supports?

The Pink Pound would be better able to handle personal debt?

Ah sur give them a kidney u don’t need two!! When Sean Quinn and his family were victims of state sponsored robbery all the fools said too bad. It’s simply state sponsored terrorism and all you turkeys voting for christmas wake up your next.

Most people had to have 20 k deposit for their houses ,they should b compensated for that as their houses are valueless now

Genuine items of significant personal sentimental value ought to be exempt with the owner proving just that. Examples would include such items as engagement rings , wedding rings , parents jewellery and suchlike.

They should be forced to sell them off, however creditors will never see a penny. If the debtors know they will be forced to do so they will just sell to a cash buyer and it’s bye bye Irene after that

I’m not commenting anymore because my comment this morning has now been censored…

I think a lot of people are selling it already here is a link if you need to auction off your unwanted jewellery http://www.jwa.ie
I have used them to sell unwanted things they have a monthly auction.
The next auction is at the 24th July but you must get your stuff in before 13 July otherwise you will have to wait to August 14.
Sell your stuff before you are forced