Mother shunned by the Celtic Tiger ends up in clutches of a loan shark

I KNOW a woman who is the mother of three children. I won’t tell you where she lives, other than to say it is in a housing estate that reflects very little credit on any of us.

You can visit this housing estate if you wish — in fact there are several like it in most of our large towns — though I wouldn’t necessarily advise you to park your car there.

Strange cars excite interest in these housing estates, and there are some youngsters in each of them who run wild.

But one thing I can guarantee you. If you do visit the housing estates I’m talking about, and stay awhile, you’ll quickly forget that you are one of the lucky inhabitants of one of the richest countries on the planet.

The woman I’m talking about, her kids are too young to run wild. But she won’t let them do that anyway. She’s determined to do her best by them, to ensure that they get the education denied to her.

Where two of the kids are concerned, there is the added complication that they have asthma. Asthma, believe it or not, is the most common health problem among kids on the estate.

That’s because, all winter long, there’s no proper heating in any of the houses, only fireplaces the families can’t afford to use. It’s not so bad now, in the good summer weather, but their mum dreads October because the coughing can get so bad it inhibits their growth.

The mum made a terrible mistake not so long ago. Her man disappeared, gone to another housing estate as it turned out, with a woman they both knew. She’s been coping alone, and it’s been hard.

The mistake happened when she woke up one Monday morning and found there was no food in the house. And no money in her purse.

She could maybe have rung one of her sisters, or her own mam, but she knew they had little themselves. And besides, it would have meant admitting she was desperate, that she couldn’t cope without a man.

She knew someone in the estate who would lend money to neighbours. So she went to him and asked for €10 just to buy bread and milk so the kids wouldn’t go to school hungry.

“I don’t lend €10, missus,” he said. “But I could give you €100.”

“The thing is,” he added, “I’ll have to have €140 back on Friday.”

She knew instinctively that she should have said no. But €100, into her hand, there and then, would solve a lot of small problems. She could buy coal, and a bit of meat.

And the social welfare payments were due, and the child benefit. She could give him back the €140 and be done with it quickly.

It didn’t work out that way. It never does. On Friday she went to the man and told him all she had was €25.

“I’ll take it,” he said. “But I’ll have to have a hundred and seventy next week.”

A couple of months later, she had repaid the man nearly €200 against the €100 she had borrowed originally. One week she borrowed another €50 because one of the kids needed books for school. The last time she went to visit him, he told her he’d need €600 by next Friday.

Of course, this moneylender is illegal. He has no licence, and his entire operation could be shut down overnight.

But there are two things that have to be taken into account in making that sort of decision.

First, the person who shops the illegal moneylender, if they’re ever discovered, will really suffer for doing it.

Secondly, for many women who have found themselves in this situation, the dependency on the moneylender becomes total. He is their only line of credit, their only hope if everything else fails.

He doesn’t want his capital back, he doesn’t want to end the relationship. He will keep lending, as long as he knows she will keep paying whatever she can afford.

She is never going to be able to pay him off anyway — just look at how her total indebtedness has climbed in a tiny space of time. But she’s still one his best customers. She’s not borrowing for drink or drugs, she’s not really borrowing at all.

All she’s doing is paying off the tiny loans she took out to meet her kids’ needs.

He has other clients he has to chase, clients who need to get a beating now and again to remind them of their responsibilities.

BUT not this mum. She takes her debts seriously, and does everything she possibly can to deal with them honourably. So she is easily exploited.

And she is not alone. There are hundreds of people in Ireland in the clutches of illegal moneylenders, who charge astonishing rates of interest and are not above the use or threat of violence when repayments aren’t made.

Nobody knows the exact number of moneylenders, or their victims, because there isn’t much incentive for turning them in.

But one study funded by the Combat Poverty Agency and published late last year (Meeting the Credit Needs of Low-Income Groups: Credit Unions v Moneylenders) estimated that approximately one-third of lone parents are currently borrowing from a moneylender.

Most of the moneylenders in this study are legal, or licensed, but even the legal ones charge interest rates of around 150% per annum.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, that a problem like this still exists in our midst in this day and age? We are very lucky in Ireland to have a highly professional and well-structured body like MABS (Money Advice and Budgeting Service).

They do incredible work in helping people to get out of debt and to manage their resources more effectively. Like most organisations of that kind, they are under-resourced.

Last year its staff of around 200 dealt with the needs of 27,000 people, many of them in a state of desperation.

They simply don’t have the time or the resources to carry out the kind of investigations that are needed to ensure that extortionate moneylending is exposed for what it is.

And they are not in a position to put the structures in place to ensure that when people need emergency help or access to short-term credit, they’ll get it.

The mum I’ve told you about exists. Her story is true, and it’s by no means the worst story I could have told you.

She’s a good mum who wants only that her kids will grow and develop in the way they ought to.

For her, the struggle to make ends meet is worthwhile if it works out that way in the end.

As she put it to me herself, “I don’t care if I have to spend the rest of my life paying that fella off. All I want is the day that my lad walks in that door and says, ‘Ma, I got my Leaving Cert’ ”.

She has a great and selfless ambition, that mum. It’s a scandal, in my view, that she has to pay through the nose for it.