What the law says
For a debt to extinguish, specific criteria must be met. Section 6 of the 1973 Act outlines the following.
Negative prescription
6. Extinction of obligations by prescriptive periods of five years.
(1) If, after the appropriate date, an obligation to which this section applies has subsisted for a continuous period of five years–
(a) without any relevant claim having been made in relation to the obligation, and
(b) without the subsistence of the obligation having been relevantly acknowledged,
then as from the expiration of that period the obligation shall be extinguished.