{"id":441,"date":"2012-07-20T12:46:48","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T12:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/government-fails-to-protect-consumers-from-money-lenders\/"},"modified":"2012-07-20T12:46:48","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T12:46:48","slug":"government-fails-to-protect-consumers-from-money-lenders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/government-fails-to-protect-consumers-from-money-lenders\/","title":{"rendered":"Government fails to protect consumers from money lenders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Government fails to protect consumers from money lenders<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tallaght based Sinn F\u00e9in TD Se\u00e1n Crowe has described the Government\u2019s failure to regulate legal money lenders as a \u201cdereliction of their duty to protect people from exploitation.”<\/p>\n

Deputy Crowe made his comments after speaking this week on a Sinn F\u00e9in Private Members\u2019 Bill that sought to cap by 40% the interest charged by licensed money lenders.<\/p>\n

Deputy Crowe said: \u201cJust this week the findings of a policy briefing by Social Justice Ireland showed 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%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Government claims that introducing greater regulation for money lenders would force some into illegal activity. Surely it is wrong to do nothing because of a perceived threat of illegality. It is my belief that some of the charges demanded by these legal moneylenders are criminal anyway. How can any company can justify charging interest at 210% to people who are often in the most desperate of circumstances, with no real alternative means of accessing money.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not good enough for Government Ministers to tell us that 17% of people in this country do not have access to a bank account while at the same time not coming up with ways of addressing their difficulty.<\/p>\n

We also have a Government spokespersons advising people to come forward with information when they are being extorted yet again the reality for\u00a0 those being exploited is that they are often fearful of making their situation worse. The fact that there has not been one successful prosecution of a money lender in the past 7 years would suggest their fears are well founded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe failure of the Government to regulate the thriving money lending business means the exploitation of vulnerable people will continue. I know families first-hand from the circumstances of my own constituents the type of hardship being imposed on hard pressed families who in desperation turn to these moneylenders, legal or otherwise, to pay for essential goods and services.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rejection of this Bill means Ireland\u2019s moneylenders will remain some of the least regulated in Europe and our citizens will continue to be ripped off and treated as fools. Many will be caught in a spiral of poverty, a trap that they will find impossible to escape.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government fails to protect consumers from money lenders Tallaght based Sinn F\u00e9in TD Se\u00e1n Crowe has described the Government\u2019s failure to regulate legal money lenders as a \u201cdereliction of their duty to protect people from exploitation.” Deputy Crowe made his comments after speaking this week on a Sinn F\u00e9in Private Members\u2019 Bill that sought to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}