Hi Peabody.
Firstly, unless you have some income you aren't telling us about, you are entitled to Social Welfare - everyone is. Speak to your Community Welfare Officer. He should be able to help you get some income going. You need to apply for Jobseekers Allowance and all that stuff. The staff at the local social welfare office should be able to help.
You need to start work on an assessment of means. this will show your creditors that you have no means. Everyone will require this - teh banks, the CU, the Revenue.
Let's face it, right now neither of you are ever going to get another home loan, so there's no point trying to repay 100% of your borrowings to protect some imaginary credit rating, which you no longer have. You're probably not even going to get another loan of any kind for the next few years. So now the focus is on protecting your home and children.
1. Contact Revenue re. the outstanding taxes. You don't want to be messing about with Revenue. The VAT wasn't yours to spend in the first place.
2. Contact the group "New Beginnings" to see if they can help with the Mortgages. At the very least, the bank should be able to let you reschedule your home loan or repay only interest for a time being.
3. Your husband needs to forget about his 'investment' property. The best situation is that he sells it and the bank writes off the remaining debt. This will require some hard negotiating, which is why maybe New Beginnings can help.
4. Screw MBNA. That's unsecured debt - which is why the interest is so high on credit-card debt. Tell them you're not repaying and ignore everything unless/until you get a court summons. Then you'll go to court with your kids and the judge will throw it out.
5. Work out a repayments plan with the CU. But at the end of the day, that's unsecured borrowings too (at least, secured only on your shares).
However the Credit Union might be able to help you out with loans to pay the insolvency fees, and the Revenue debt. Maybe also roll your husbands CU debt into the same loan and work out a repayment plan.
Make it clear that if they can't help you with the Revenue and your husbands CU debt, you wont' be in a situation to repay the existing loan as you'll have to pay Revenue first.
6. AFAIK in order to be made bankrupt in teh UK you have to prove your main interests are there, which you won't be able to as you live in teh Republic, only have property/bank accounts etc. in the Republic. It's one thing if you're a rich developer with lots of accountants to organise things, it's another if you're Joe Citizen.
hope this helps.