Frank Feighan (Fine Gael)

I would like the Leader to invite the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to outline the measures he intends to take to stop the growth of pyramid schemes. Yesterday, we heard that a pyramid scheme with over 1,000 investors has collapsed. The same issues arose in Cork over two months ago.

It is a serious situation because there are many naive people, including maybe politicians, who think they can make a quick buck through these schemes. Large sums of money are being lost. These people have been subjected to aggressive on-line salesmanship. It is a widespread problem and many middle-income earners in suburbia are losing large sums of money. Perhaps a hotline could be set up which people could telephone to check out a scheme, not to check its bona fides because there probably are none. At least people could satisfy themselves that they will not go deeply into debt. Three people in my constituency invested in the Meath scheme and lost money. There must be many embarrassed people around the country who will not come forward. Maybe now is the time to stop these schemes.