Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

That is what the money advisers do at present. I am aware the Deputy had a meeting recently to deal with her interests and concerns in this regard but in any company I have visited, the money advisers contact all the different creditors. One problem they are encountering is that those who are approaching them have up to 23 different creditors. In the past, when they dealt with a person who was dependent on social welfare, the problem may simply have been with the utilities, whereas at present, the MABS is finding the problems pertain to the utilities, financial institutions' moneylenders and a range of others. Consequently, each individual person who comes in is taking a considerable amount of time and the MABS is quite extended. However, those money advisers, having met the individual concerned, start negotiating with the banks. Recently the banks have signed up in respect of repossessions of homes and a timescale that would be used in that regard. Moreover, the statutory code of conduct that was introduced last week has meant that when people run into difficulty with financing institutions, they must be referred to MABS for advice. That is the role of the money advisers.

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