Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State has spoken to amendment No. 3 so I will make the following point. If the Government was willing to work with me as the sponsor of this legislation over the past four years, there would have been a different approach. A contracts Bill was passed unanimously by the Houses of the Oireachtas and I was a sponsor of that, and there was also legislation relating to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, which saw real engagement. Through all the process, and even when the Government put forward its proposals, we offered amendments to try to sharpen the legislation. Often, these are rejected but on a number of occasions amendments have been accepted or the Minister has agreed to sharpen the legislation as a result on Report Stage. That approach was not taken by the Government with this legislation and the Government is more interested in having its moneylender Bill.

That said, I do not give a damn whose stamp is on the legislation at the end of the day. The Minister of State speaks of dealing with drafting issues and the benefit of the Attorney General or other advices, which we do not have. As an Opposition party, we nonetheless expect the process evident in two other pieces of legislation that have been enacted would be seen here. Unfortunately, that did not happen over four years with this legislation.

That said, outside the drafting issues there is a core issue in the Government's Bill, which is that it does not do enough. It barely scratches the surface on the question of moneylending. The Minister of State mentioned that people would not have credit and all the rest. The largest moneylender in this country left the State, as it had hundreds of thousands of customers and many of them were intergenerational. What did the Government do to create awareness in those consumers about where they could get credit? Point me to one initiative or press release. Point me to anything the Government did.