ABSTRACT
This Part focuses on what the Cork Committee described as one of the main aims of insolvency law: the maintenance of public confidence in the system as being one under which those to whom credit is extended should not be lightly released from their obligation to pay. The Cork Committee observed1 that ‘it is a basic objective of the law to support the maintenance of commercial morality and encourage the fulfilment of financial obligations. Insolvency must not be an easy solution for those who can bear with equanimity the stigma of their own failure or their responsibility for the failure of a company under their management’. Later in the Cork Report,2 the Committee observed that society requires to be satisfied in respect of four distinct matters: first, whether or not fault or blame attaches to the conduct of the insolvent; secondly, if it does, that the insolvent will be suitably punished; thirdly, that the insolvent’s opportunity to repeat such conduct in the future should be controlled whilst at the same time allowing re-establishment of legitimate trading activities; finally, whether and to what extent the responsibility for the insolvency is attributable to someone other than the insolvent.
