Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein)

On the rare occasions when we hear the term "moneylender" we automatically conjure up an image of a shady character, usually a man exploiting the poor and vulnerable. Only the latter part of this statement is accurate. The poor, vulnerable and, above all, desperate are the main users of this service. Although it may offend our middle-class sensibilities moneylenders are, given the current environment, offering a service and I will return to this point later.

There is a perception in the public imagination of the moneylender as a shady male character. While it would be naive to suggest that such people did not exist, it is wide of the mark. The greater share of licensed non-banking money lending in Ireland is controlled by Provident Financial plc, a global company operating in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Poland, Romania and other jurisdictions. Provident is quoted on the London stock exchange and describes itself as a non-standard provider of home-delivered credit for unsecured consumers. In other words, it lends door to-door to people with no assets.

This is a lucrative business. According to Bloomberg, Provident will have revenues of $1.1 billion in 2013. In the long term Provident aims to be the main provider of credit to 10 million people in the UK and Ireland who collectively borrow €65 billion each year. In Ireland the interest rate charged is 187%. I took a cursory look at Provident's website. Upon first viewing one might think one had mistakenly entered a children's play site. The childlike nature of the site, with its bright colours and cartoonish characters, can seduce those in search of easy cash while concealing the dark underbelly that is money lending in Ireland. Various boxes on the webpage offer cash loans from €100 to €500 with low, manageable weekly repayments and no late fee. If these do not succeed in enticing the desperate then a subsequent box with the bold heading, "Can I get a Cash Loan?" might do so. This is aimed at people who may be unemployed, who have a poor credit history or who have been turned down before. The website answers in the affirmative suggesting that all circumstances will be considered and, using bold red lettering, invites the prospective applicant to "Get Started". Thus people begin their journey into a vicious cycle of debt from which few escape.

In this harsh, often hidden world the working poor, the under-employed, people with disabilities, members of the Travelling community, single mothers and other vulnerable people are consciously exploited through no fault of their own. These people are overwhelmingly concentrated in working class communities throughout urban Ireland. They live in neighbourhoods that have experienced virtually nothing of the Celtic tiger but everything that is bad and negative about the ongoing recession. In social, political and economic terms these people occupy the urban wastelands of contemporary Ireland. Thus far the political elite have continued to turn a blind eye to their plight. In many respects this in the most benign aspect of this tale.

More alarming and more politically relevant is the fact that the Government, through its austerity policies and the harsh budget, has essentially consigned these people to a life of poverty, uncertainty and to a future of endless scraping to just eke out some form of existence. The State's deliberate reproduction of a class of permanently poor people and its callous disregard of its responsibility to provide an adequate safety net for those experiencing economic hardship and living in poverty is nothing short of scandalous. Despite this, the State has no problem bailing out zombie banks and unknown bondholders. It can afford to pay thousands of euro in salaries to bankrupt developers, the very same people who bankrupted the State.

Provident's poor and vulnerable customers have no place in this discourse on banking, economics and the state of the nation. They are in every respect surplus to requirements - a lumpen population left to the mercy of money-lending vultures.

A recent policy briefing by Social Justice Ireland shows that the income of Ireland's poorest households fell by over 18% in a single year, while the income of the richest rose by 4%. The report suggests that the top 10% of the population receives almost 14 times more disposable income. In comparison, the poor are experiencing the worst income distribution over the past 30 years. This is clear evidence, as if any were needed, that current Government policy is class based in that it consciously and deliberately favours the rich over the poor and vulnerable. Put another way, there is something profoundly wrong with Government decisions that produce a lopsided distribution of income favouring the richest when Ireland's poor and those on middle incomes struggle to make ends meet. If anyone is in doubt about the negative impact of current Government policy on those struggling to get by, or of the impact of economic policy on class composition, then the stark reality is that as a result of a succession of austerity measures the disposable income of the poorest households fell by 18.6% in a single year, while the incomes of the richest rose by 4.1%.

Overwhelmingly, this has had a disproportionate impact on women and children. For example, over 200,000 children in Ireland are now believed to be living in poverty. Another 700,000 persons are at risk of poverty, and all the while unemployment is rising. Such figures are by any measure disgraceful and they reveal the profound disconnect of those in power from the reality of life for the low paid and the poor. This indifference and basic lack of empathy and humanity with their fellow Irish men and women is only superseded by an arrogance that emanates from the male-dominated middle-class elites who govern the country in their own interests.

Most of those who borrow from moneylenders in Ireland are women. There are cultural reasons for this but, more importantly, there are structural ones. For example, international research has repeatedly shown that poor households, whether in Ireland or in the developing world, are almost always headed by women. This explains why almost 80% of moneylenders who Provident employs are also women. These workers receive no wage - rather they work on commission.

There are a number of actions the Government could take immediately to loosen the grip of moneylenders in poor communities. It could compel the banks, almost all of which are now State-owned, to offer basic bank accounts to those with limited means. It could support Sinn Féin's Private Members' Bill and place a cap of 40% APR on licensed moneylenders. However, the most important requirement in tackling poverty and exclusion is the provision of sufficient income to enable people to live with dignity and in the final analysis, such a measure would also allow those who currently occupy positions of power in this country also to have some dignity. I urge all Members to support Sinn Féin's Private Members' Bill.

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