28th Janaury 2014
By Bryan Smyth
bryan@TheCork.ie
Sinn Fein’s Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire has criticised the record of Labour TD Ciarán
Lynch on the issue of Money Lenders Interest Rates.
The Sinn Féin candidate for Ballincollig-Carrigaline LEA, was
responding to comments made by Ciarán Lynch on Newstalk this morning
(Tuesday).
Deputy Lynch, was speaking ahead of an Oireachtas Finance Committee
meeting on the subject of ‘Pay Day Loans’, operated by Legal Money
Lenders, with extortionate 3 figure % interest rates.
Mr Ó Laoghaire drew attention to Deputy Lynch’s voting against the
Consumer Credit (Amendment) Bill 2012.
“We are now seeing that the Labour Party has realised the huge
difficulties being caused by the extortionate interest rates being
charged by some Money Lenders.”
“It is all very well for Deputy Lynch to express his concern on
National Radio, the reality is he had the opportunity to deal with
this over a year and a half ago.”
“Instead he preferred to ignore the issue and leave hard pressed
families carry the can.”
“The Consumer Credit (Amendment) Bill 2012 would have capped Interest
Rates at 40% APR, however, the Government and Deputy Lynch voted
against it.”
“It is welcome that he seems to have come around to what Sinn Féin
have been saying on the need for interest caps.”
“We hope that he will support any future attempts to introduce such
caps, but, the honest thing to do would be to acknowledge that he, and
the Government got it wrong in 2012.”
