Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I had hoped the scheme would cover the Lough scheme payments but it seems more limited. Therefore, I again appeal to the Minister of State to include such payments because they are in the same vein. I welcome the initiative but it is not as extensive as I had hoped. The Lough payment scheme came about following agreement among a number of credit unions and it seemed to work well. I met a number of Travellers who have benefited from the scheme. They told me they never had a problem making repayments because they were facilitated in this regard by something similar to a direct debit. As a result, their repayments were guaranteed. Most of them previously had difficulties accessing funds other than by means of taking them from their savings.

They were unable to save sufficient money to buy a new mobile home or otherwise. It was usually for a mobile home that they needed a loan. They did not have a proper credit rating. In some cases, they were transient because they were living in a mobile home, which meant the financial institutions would not accept their addresses even though the Department accepted them as they were in receipt of social welfare payments. MABS and the credit unions worked with them. As far as I know, in all the time it was operating - I think it was up to ten years, and unofficially in some cases - all of the debts were cleared. They did not have to rely on the fact that the credit unions in these instances were the guarantors of the loan.

The Department will be in existence long after us. Will it examine the documentation produced at the time by the Northside Family Resource Centre and the National Traveller MABS group, which outlined the case? It would be useful not only for Travellers in that more and more families are ending up homeless and without an address and they will face similar problems in the future as they do not have a permanent address. Without a permanent address, they will find it difficult to access funding, whether for a car, a mobile home or something like that. At least in this way, they would have some control because the money comes out of their payment and there is already a rule that money cannot be taken out which would leave people in absolute poverty. The Department can also control that so people do not sign up to something they cannot afford. Given the housing crisis, we should look at this as an urgent proposal.