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Kildare Money Advice provided advice and assistance to 246 indebted clients
in 1999, as compared to 205 in 1998, a 25% increase. We had 189 new clients
during the year, again up on the previous year's total of 153, with a
further 57 clients being carried over from 1998. (see annex 1.)
The main form of assistance was to renegotiate debts with creditors (135
clients). In 21 cases, this help was supplemented by providing a budget
account. Thirty-three clients received information on how to handle their
debts. One client received a guaranteed loan to clear off their debts.
On average, we had between two and three meetings per client. Most of
these took place in our offices, with a third on an outreach basis.
Clients come to the service from a variety of sources, with being family
and self referrals being the biggest category, followed by the health
board, credit unions, local information centres and the Society of St
Vincent de Paul.
Half of our new clients in 1999 were lone parents, including widowed
and separated people. A third were either married or cohabiting and 18
per cent of clients were single. In most cases (73 per cent), the client
contact was female. Only in a quarter of cases was the client male, with
both male and female making contact in 4 per cent of cases.
The majority of clients (69 per cent) were on social welfare, with a
28 per cent in paid employment. The remainder was mainly on community
employment or similar training programme. A third of clients owned their
own home, most of whom were still paying a mortgage. Twenty-nine per cent
were in rented local authority accommodation and 28 per cent lived in
the private rented sector, mostly with a rent subsidy. This combination
of low incomes and high housing costs was highly significant in terms
of the underlying causes of indebtedness.
There are some interesting differences in client profile as between the
two offices. Maynooth deals more with clients who are in paid employment,
have a mortgage and are single. By contrast, the Newbridge office caters
largely for people on welfare, are parenting on their own and who live
in rented accommodation.
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