Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I take the Minister of State's point in regard to my amendment No. 70 that the reference in section 62 to "such conditions or requirements or both as the Bank considers appropriate" would seem to allow the Central Bank to require these entities to publish their fees and charges. If he can tell me that this will actually happen, that is fair enough and there is no need to press the amendment. In other words, if it is the intention of Government that the fees and charges of debt management agencies will be published in the same way that moneylenders' fees and charges are published, then there is no need for this additional transparency provision. My concern, however, is that this potentially will not happen even though, as the Minister of State outlined, the scope for it to happen is contained within the existing provision.

That is why I wanted to specify it in the Bill as a subsection. If the Minister of State can confirm to me that it is intended that the fees and charges of debt management agencies will be published in the manner I have suggested, that would be welcome.

In respect of amendment No. 43 concerning the regulation of debt collectors, I agree with the Minister of State up to a point. There is no doubt that the Minister for Justice and Equality and the Department of Justice and Equality have a role to play in regulating debt collectors. The problem is that this has fallen between two stools, between the Departments of Finance and Justice and Equality because of the different types of debt collector involved, while the Minister of State has mentioned different types of product and service and so on. It is welcome that the Minister for Finance has indicated that the Minister for Justice and Equality is willing to consider this and work with others. There is no doubt that my party and I will work closely with the Minister if he is bringing forward this legislation.

I want, however, to discuss the core of this amendment. The amendment does not deal with debt collectors across the board, although the Minister of State spoke about business debts and so on. It does not attempt to regulate debt collectors in that fashion; it defines a debt collector as "a person who for remuneration collects or seeks to collect consumer credit debt" and, therefore, applies to consumer credit debt only. The Central Bank should regulate any agency that collects consumer credit debt. This involves accepting that there is a role for the Department of Justice and Equality in dealing with debt collectors, but the amendment attempts to include consumer credit debt within the terms of a financial service provider in order that a portion of it can be regulated by the Central Bank. That is one of the major core problems and the reason we have not so far moved to regulate debt collectors because some of their work falls within the brief of the Minister for Finance and some within the brief of the Minister for Justice and Equality because of the different types of service and product involved. This is simply about consumer credit debt and it would be very hard to say the Central Bank should not regulate consumer credit debt and its collection. I appreciate the fact that the Minister of State has decided not to accept the amendment, but I have spoken on it again because I passionately believe we need to regulate for it. This is one of the few areas left unregulated and we must move quickly towards regulating it. While the Minister for Justice and Equality is committed to dealing with something in the future, we could in this Bill which could pass into law within a few days regulate consumer credit debt. We could deal with it in a wider way when the Minister for Justice and Equality introduces his Bill.

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