Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

Just five of the 19 additional staff are full-time. How many additional full-time positions are there in the Money Advice and Budgeting Service? How many full-time positions do those 19 people hold? While it may be difficult, it is better to act before people get themselves into difficulties. Does the Minister have any plans to be more proactive in trying to assist people before they get into debt? I ask that question because 80% of Irish mortgage holders are on variable or tracker mortgages. It is expected that the European Central Bank will increase interest rates next year, or sometime after that. The number of people unable to pay their mortgages will increase at that point. We need to try to resolve that situation and assist those people at this point, rather than waiting for them to get into difficulties down the road. Does the Minister have any plans to regulate commercial debt advisers? She will have seen reports over recent weeks about companies that have been set up in this sector. It seems that people saw a vacuum in the market and moved in. Like MABS, I have many concerns about the lack of regulation of this sector. People are having to make significant down-payments to some of these companies. I am aware of cases in which the first month's payment went to the company, rather than being used to pay a utility bill or some other bill. I have concerns about such practices. It would be better to regulate this area now so that we do not have to address greater problems in a year's time.

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