WINDING UP

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expressly included amongst the expenses. Payments on
account of expenses may be made by the liquidator from
time to time out of any funds in his hands.

After the expenses, the company’s debts must be paid,
and, first, it is to be observed that the right of the Crown, by
virtue of its prerogatives, to be paid in priority to all other
creditors, has been held to have been superseded by legislation,
and its only existing right to priority is that conferred by
s. 264 (1) (a) (see below) [Food Controller v. Cork (1923), A.C.
h47]. Hence the first creditors to be paid are now those to
whom priority is given by s. 264, which section is as follows :—

264.—(1) In a winding up there shall be paid in priority

to all other debts—

fa) All parochial or other local rates due from the
company at the relevant date and having become
due and payable within twelve months next before
that date, and all assessed taxes, land tax, property
or income tax assessed on the company up to the
fifth day of April next before that date, and not
exceeding in the whole one year’s assessment ;
All wages or salary (whether or not earned wholly
or in part by way of commission) of any clerk
or servant in respect of services rendered to the
company during four months next before the
relevant date, not exceeding fifty pounds;
All wages of any workman or labourer not exceed-
ing twenty-five pounds, whether payable for time or
for piece-work, in respect of services rendered to
the company during two months before the
relevant date;

Provided that where any labourer in husbandry
has entered into a contract for the payment of a
portion of his wages in a lump sum at the end of
che year of hiring, he shall have priority in respect
of the whole of such sum, or a part thereof, as the
Court may decide to be due under the contract,
proportionate to the time of service up to the
relevant date;

Unless the company is wound up voluntarily merely
for the purposes of reconstruction or of amalgama-
tion with another company, or unless the company
has at the commencement of the winding up under
such a contract with insurers as is mentioned in
section seven of the Workmen's Compensation
Act, 1925, rights capable of being transferred to

Preferential
Payments.