Sir, - I refer to your excellent recent Editorial on moneylenders (The Irish Times, January 8th).
As you correctly state, many people will be surprised that the moneylender continues to thrive at a time when this State is enjoying an unprecedented level of prosperity and growth. The current estimates is that £60 million is on loan to thousands of families from the 65 licensed moneylenders.
They offer unsecured loans to the marginalised - desperately poor people who would not be entertained by the main financial institutions in some of the bleakest housing estates in our cities and those skirting large provincial towns. The money is usually required to fund an essential electrical appliance or to bring some measure of fleeting happiness by funding a First Holy Communion or Confirmation.
The school curriculum should involve some compulsory classes in educating pupils in money matters and household budgeting. For all our co-called economic success, 23 per cent of the population are functionally illiterate - i.e., they have difficulty reading a bill or instructions on a medicine bottle. An OECD report in recent years found Ireland's level of adult illiteracy to be second only to that of Poland, of the states it examined.
Mr Jim Walsh of the Combat Poverty Agency correctly puts the onus on the Government to intervene to make cheap finance available to the lower paid. The poor must have access to affordable credit. The Government must tread where the banks and credit unions won't go. But, having said that, the banks should not be allowed walk away.
Perhaps the Government would begin by setting up a social lending policy with the funds presently in the bank's dormant accounts.
Politicians have been elected to bring a sense of order to the lives of all the people they represent. - Yours, etc.,
Deirdre Kenneally, Glanmire Court, Glanmire, Co Cork.