Mr. Paul Joyce:

There appear to be three distinct situations here. The Bill as currently constituted is attempting to deal with an entity that buys a debt and therefore, the original creditor moves out of the picture and one has a new creditor. In such a situation, the legislation should ensure that all existing consumer protection measures that are in place for the borrower whose debt has been factored on are maintained, including the codes, the consumer credit legislation and so on. Then there is a situation where an existing creditor might instruct a debt collection company to collect a debt that is in arrears but the debt still belongs to the original creditor. Then there is a third situation where the bank may be foreign-based and gets another entity to service the debt in its entirety on the bank's behalf. For example, this may be a mortgage that is not in arrears at all. It would appear sensible that the legislation would cover all those eventualities and unless I am mistaken, it is fair to state that debt collection and debt management firms and services have only become regulated recently under the Central Bank supervision and enforcement legislation. It took quite some time for that to be put in place and I am unsure whether the extent of that regulation is as robust as perhaps it should be.

I refer to the moneylending issue and the Provident case.

It is true that licensed moneylenders operate through local agents who act on their behalf. Although I am not saying it happened in this case, sometimes the agent goes on a solo run. This case involved top-up loans, which were being extended to people who had not paid off the original loan they had taken out. This is a clear and flagrant breach of section 99 of the Consumer Credit Act. Why is a fine imposed when the Central Bank's notice specifically drew attention to a legislative breach? If this is the type of regulation we have, whereby original creditors or companies to whom debt is factored on have breached legislative requirements but the penalty is a settlement, it calls into question how vigorous consumer protection is.