Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Of course it will be a new loan. That the Minister of State shrugs his shoulders at that idea means he fails to understand exactly what is happening with moneylenders. This is the problem. There are families out there at the minute who are borrowing €1,000 and are paying it back. They pay the €560 interest. At the moment they are rolling that over and will not be allowed to do that and will have to take out a new loan for the €1,000 and pay another €560 interest, and so on and so forth. We cannot stop them doing that but we can and should be regulating the moneylenders to prevent them from advertising that new loan as they are coming up to the term. If an individual wants to seek out a moneylender and apply for high-cost credit, that is fine, but when somebody knows that Mary and Michael are coming to the end of their term, this gives rise to a predatory practice that should be stopped. That is my point.

I know what is happening in this legislation and that one cannot roll over, but the reality is that most of these customers will be able to get new loans. It is a good thing that there will be an extra burden there and most will be able to do this but the problem is that this predatory practice is a problem. It has been happening in the past and this is probably going to limit door-to-door sales where there were three generations involved and they were looking at Johnny who was turning 17 or 18 in the same way where the moneylenders could behave towards him in that predatory way. That will come to an end but the idea that these moneylenders can hold and try to keep a data sheet is not good. The legislation should regulate the advertisement in that regard.