Mr. Ed Farrell:

That is a good synopsis of the situation. Half of the credit unions are already in the scheme. I am fairly sure that covers more than half the population of the country. Many of the credit unions in more urban areas are in the scheme. We are hoping to get more credit unions in. Mr. Corr has explained the rationale for increasing the interest rate cap, which would help credit unions defray some of the costs. The scheme will never be run to make money, but directors of credit unions are duty-bound not to lose too much on a product line and not to subsidise it too much. An Post charge 25 cent per transaction to administer the scheme. It is very good that we were able to arrange deduction from social welfare payments because that makes it almost like a secured loan. It is like paying one's taxes; deduction at source is much safer. It gave comfort to everyone that the level of arrears would be much lower than if there was not deduction at source.

It is a matter of us encouraging more and more credit unions. We have always told Deputies and Senators that they should also encourage people to open up lines in their local credit unions if they have not already done so because we would like to see the whole country covered by this scheme. Independent research from UCC on interest rate caps across Europe, moneylending, and the credit union interest rate cap says that the country must be fully covered before we can expect to make real inroads into moneylending. I expect that more credit unions will come on board but I stress that half of credit unions operate the scheme and that more than half of the country is covered. We launched the scheme three years ago. There are seven or eight groups of stakeholders involved, which include all of us here today, the Department, and An Post. It has worked well having begun from a standing start. There are monthly meetings of those groups, which try to ensure that momentum is maintained now that we have it and that we get more and more families into this scheme and away from much more expensive and less desirable sources.