Sir, - The ongoing saga over the status of Superquinn, and the effect it is having on its suppliers and potentially its employees, confirms in my mind the unfairness of the legal system in place to deal with distressed businesses that end up in examinership, receivership or liquidation.
As an example, in a liquidation, why should our country's laws give preferential status to certain creditors, such as the banks or the Revenue Commissioners?
A bank may have an argument that it is lending its money to a business and is exposed to a certain amount of risk, perhaps quite a lot of risk if it goes around lending €450 million to property developers to purchase a retail chain.
However, the Revenue Commissioners are not adding value to a business, so why this organisation has preference over the remaining funds in a distressed company versus other parties, such as suppliers, is confusing to me.
In a difficult time when a business is failing or has failed, there are two routes that can be taken. The business has potential and could be saved to continue to trade after restructuring, or there is no hope and the business needs to be wound down.
In the two scenarios, the likelihood is that there will be pain for all parties associated with the business, such as the shareholders, employees and suppliers of services, including banks.
Would it not be fairer if there were a legal rebalancing of the sharing of the pain so that everybody was guaranteed at least a reasonable contribution from the limited funds left once such a business entered the period of restructuring or winding down?
While I can understand there is a need for a preferential creditor status of some sort in certain circumstances, that such creditors get pretty much all of the pie is truly unfair, whereas if the burden were shared across the board, everybody would take a bit of pain but everybody would get something back.
Is that not what we have been doing for the banks since 2008, sharing the burden with taxpayers' money to save distressed businesses, ie the banks? - Yours, etc,