Ms Annmarie O'Connor:

It is a loan that is structured with a multi-stakeholder group behind it. It is currently available through 100 credit unions. It came from a pilot project and is now almost a mainstream product across the movement. It targets low-income borrowers. There is a link through the household budget scheme. Borrowers can repay from their social welfare payments where it is linked through the household budget scheme. That provides a degree of reassurance over the repayment of the loan. In our experience of our clients who have accessed it, it is very effective for those clients who were thinking about taking a loan from the doorstep lender or the licensed moneylender. This is a viable alternative for them; there are thresholds on the loan value and so on. We believe it is a product that offers an alternative to that. Given the amount of money credit unions have and given that moneylenders have a client base of I believe 300,000 clients, we wonder what more we can we do now. We have to make this loan and products like it much more widely available to low-income borrowers because those borrowers are simply not attractive to the high street, mainstream-----