Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This type of finance is extremely attractive for understandable reasons, particularly to young male drivers. That is my experience. PCP appears to be a very attractive deal but that is not quite as true as the advertising would suggest. At a time when credit finance from the banks is extremely difficult to access it is an avenue which people can explore and use. I am concerned, however, about the crossover when young people are applying for mortgages in that they may end up with a riskier credit profile because they have borrowed €20,000 and so on to purchase a car. While young people are availing of this consumer financing market now further on in their lives if they have secured good jobs and they want to apply for a mortgage to purchase a house - which we all hope will happen for everybody - they may find it is a very big disadvantage that they have been involved in a PCP, particularly one that went wrong and ended acrimoniously. Does the Competition and Consumer Protection Authority offer advice on PCPs? I believe that advice is very important for young people, many of them are accumulating debt without understanding the significance of it. Many of these deals often end badly and thus result in the a person having a bad credit rating. Also, banks might tend to look less favourably on the applications for mortgages from people who have previously displayed a tendency to purchase big cars.