Financial help - No excuse for ESB’s credit rate

It is unacceptable that the ESB, a semi-State body, should be responsible for financial hardship inflicted on people who, through circumstances, are forced to get basic household equipment on the company’s expensive credit scheme.

Charging a rate of 22.9% interest on items such fridges and cookers is exorbitant, and is just fractionally under the rate charged by money lenders.

That - combined with the cost of electricity - is causing extreme financial problems for many of the country’s less well-off trying to exist on minimal household budgets.