Government urged to honour promise to protect borrowers

The Free Legal Advice Centre (FLAC) is today calling on the Government to honour its promise to help people struggling with banks debts.

The centre says that, when recapitalising the banks to prevent them from collapse, the Minister for Finance promised to provide similar protection to borrowers who find themselves in difficulty.

However, it says this has yet to happen in any realistic manner and there is very little effective protection for borrowers in Ireland.

FLAC is making the comments following figures showing that the Money Advice and Budgeting Service helped almost 10,000 new clients in the first half of this year.

Nineteen new staff members are being employed by the service to help cope with the demand.