Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 166: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if she will provide MABSIS data for the first two months of 2009 for each Money Advice and Budgeting Service centre in respect of the number of new clients, the number of new clients earning a wage, the number of new clients with a mortgage and the total and average debt owed by new clients when they first presented to MABS. [12763/09]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS) provided services to 3,373 new clients in the period to end February 2009. In addition 500 people sought information about budgeting and money management. The MABS National Helpline received approx 4,230 calls to end of February 2009.

National MABS statistics are produced on a monthly basis and individual company statistics are produced quarterly. The national MABS statistics for January/February 2009 show that the majority of new clients were receiving social welfare payments (62%), some 830 (25%) were receiving Jobseekers payments, 525 (16%) were receiving One Parent Family Payment and 164 (4.9%) were in receipt of illness/disability payments. In addition 25% of clients were in employment and 3.9% were self-employed.

Clients mostly lived in rented accommodation, with 24% living in private rented accommodation and 21% in rented local authority accommodation. People with mortgages made up 34% of clients and 7% lived with parents.

The total owed by new clients in February 2009 to creditors, based on the debt they had when they first came to the MABS, amounted to €46.2 million, which works out at an average amount of €13,700 debt per client. Of the total amount of debt 65% was owed to banks/financial institutions, 15% was owed to credit unions, 2% was owed in respect of utilities bills and 2% was owed to moneylenders.

Information on new clients per MABS company up to the end of December 2008 is detailed in the following table.