Dr. Noreen Byrne:

One of the primary reasons that moneylenders are an attractive option, as Deputy Doherty said, is ease of access and convenience. Another point is that there is a tradition of using them. People's parents would have used a moneylender in the past and now the next generation is doing the same. Another aspect that makes it difficult to drive a change is that people have good relationships with the moneylenders. It is usually not, as Dr. McCarthy pointed out, a baseball bat scenario. The moneylenders are almost seen as family friends. In addition, there is an aspect of keeping the agent in employment. There is a bit of that going on as well. These people are sitting in the borrower's sitting room or kitchen and the borrower knows them very well.

In regard to costs, including labour costs, one of the things on which the moneylender does not have a cost is marketing. Moneylenders are in the family context and can prompt people and so on. Marketing their services is a cost they do not have. There are lots of issues involved. Research we did some time ago involved talking to a credit union manager who had put a lot of work into getting people to switch to the credit union. His building was across the road from a housing estate and he could see the moneylender heading back in there. The moneylender had been moved out of the estate by the credit union offering services but people ended up, where they had funeral costs or whatever, going back to the moneylender and back into that relationship. If we can change the context, as Ms Corcoran and Mr. Whelan noted in their submissions, then the model will change somewhat and it will be possible to transition people to a different way of operating.

Another important point is that the focus in terms of moneylending has always been on the individual. Instead, the focus needs to be on the household and the community and looking at the where the drain of wealth out of a community is happening. When the focus is only on the individual, we get into a scenario of people saying they are satisfied and it is a convenient service and all of that. We end up in a place where we may ask who we are to tell someone from whom they should borrow. If we can encourage individuals to think in a community context and to consider that moneylending leads to a massive drain of wealth out of the community, that can shift the conversation somewhat. There may not be enough research done on this particular aspect. We have done a few small bits but only on a geographical basis. We tried to do that in the context of the social housing research we talked about earlier.

It is a difficult issue to tackle. The transition idea is useful in terms of encouraging people to operate in a different way. It is very convenient that somebody comes to the borrower's house and that person can buy a washing machine and things like that for the borrower. That is the other point in terms of a drain of wealth. If the moneylender is providing a washing machine, for example, it is probably purchased elsewhere, which means none of the money is staying locally. It is all drained out of the community and there is no savings elements either. Things need to shift towards a community wealth-building kind of conversation and space. That encourages individuals to think differently and it encourages policymakers and everybody else to think differently as well.