Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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That is a mistake in the context of how they operate and how they target vulnerable customers. Is there anything in the legislation that will ban the practice of promoting new loans to customers who are nearing final repayments? We challenge the interest that is being charged to someone who takes out a six-month loan from a moneylender, and we can see that they are paying possibly ten to 12 times more than if they had received the same amount of money from a credit union. They must pay hundreds of additional euro than if they had got that loan from a credit union. It sounds terrible that they will have paid €300 or €400 more, for example, but the reality for many individuals who have gone to a moneylender is the practice of continuing to keep them under the grip of the moneylender. The moneylender advertises a loan as the current loan is expiring, which means the person is in a continuous period of high-cost credit. This means he or she is paying thousands upon thousands of euro extra as a result of the level of indebtedness.