Legislation to enforce compliance from people who refuse to pay their debts is an attack on small businesses and employers, the Dáil has heard.

Sinn Féin enterprise spokesman Peadar Tóibín said the Government was asking employers to become debt collectors against their employees. This, he claimed, would “smash” the good relationship they had nurtured with staff “to create a productive and decent” working environment.

“Employers, like landlords, are to become the State’s debt collectors,” he said.

“This legislation is an attack on them,” he said, and puts paid to the “myth” that jobs are the Government’s number one priority.

He was speaking during debate on the Civil Debt (Procedures) Bill, which will allow a court to order deductions from payments to a social welfare recipient, or the attachment of earnings of employees for debts between €500 and €4,000.

Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald, who introduced the Bill, said it also abolishes the imprisonment of debtors. “The reforms are aimed at debtors who have capacity to pay their debts but fail to do so, the ‘won’t pay’ debtors. This would include Irish Water charges, among others,” she said.

Capacity to pay

Ms Fitzgerald said the legislation “will not be directed at those who can’t pay but at those who can pay but choose not to, and it will not be directed at anyone unless the court decides that it is within their capacity to pay”.

But Mr Tóibín said after 10 days the employer becomes liable for the employee’s noncompliance and could be fined up to €4,000.

The Meath West TD said many companies did not have the administrative payroll infrastructure to deal with this requirement. He said the Oireachtas jobs committee repeatedly heard from employer groups whose members were overburdened and living on the edge. “Now the Government wants them to become both debtor and creditor in respect of their employees’ unpaid debts. As if employers had not enough to do already, they must now deal with court documents and procedures.”

During the six-hour debate in the Dáil, Fine Gael TD Catherine Byrne criticised people who would not pay their bin charges or water bills but filled their trolleys with alcohol and “60 or 80 smokes at €10 a package”. She also criticised people who put all their rubbish in street bins while their elderly neighbours paid their bin charges.

She said for a couple with two children with water charges capped at €260 and the €100 conservation grant, their water could cost €3.07 a week “to have clear water, to take your showers, to wash your vegetables, to wash your babies, to fill up your babies’ bottles”.

Ms Byrne said the Bill “is about people taking responsibility for being a civic person living in this society” and was a step in the right direction of “fairness and balance”.

Socialist TD Ruth Coppinger said the Bill “is focused on the debts of the little people”.

“When will the Government bring forward a Bill to deal with the debts of the big people?” she asked.