Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I reiterate much of what has already been said, particularly by my colleagues, Deputy Martin Kenny and Patricia Ryan. It has also been said by Deputy Nash. That is hands across the constituency but it might not continue. It is very difficult to speak against a consumer protection Bill. In fairness, most people have dealt with the dangers of personal contract plans. These are something that, no pun intended, have absolutely ballooned since 2014 when records were kept. We are now speaking about credit of approximately €1.7 billion. The difficulty is PCPs can seem affordable to many people due to what look like affordable repayments at the beginning but the problem is it is all put to the end in a balloon payment. There are incredible difficulties. Any extra protections, and anything from the point of view of further auditing or protection provided by the Central Bank and others, are fully required.

We accept the protection with regard to the limit of 23% for the annual percentage rate, particularly with regard to these types of hire purchase arrangements. A serious difficulty with the Bill is the fact that it does not deal with moneylenders. We all know the issues with moneylenders as we hear them in our constituency offices. If we were in a different period of time canvassing it would be coming up. I add my voice to the fact we will need to look at some of these pieces on Committee Stage. We could also possibly look at Deputy Doherty's legislation on moneylenders. It is absolutely necessary. There are protections in this and we just need to strengthen them.

Seeing as I have the Minister of State here, it would be remiss of me not to raise another issue. The answers to these questions are pertinent and take precedence but I have had a number of issues with regard to public liability insurance in the past fortnight. I will give the example of a community centre in my constituency that was charged €11,000 for its insurance payment for a year. Luckily there was an online funding campaign that delivered. We have dealt with the need for guidelines and for the Government to get more people into the market, particularly with regard to public liability insurance. We are now at a critical stage, particularly with regard to companies, community centres and businesses.

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