MABS worries over changes

THE board of directors at MABS Dundalk have voiced fears that the restructuring of Money Advice and Budget Service and the Citizens Information Service will impact the organisation’s ability to deliver services locally.

Larry McCarthy, who has served as MABS director since the organisation was set up in 1996, is worried that plans to disband MABs voluntary companies and CIS boards and to create regional structures will affect their ability to provide as good as service as previously as it will lead to a loss of local knowledge.

He says that MABS boards around the country have been vocal in expressing their concerns about the amalgamation which is being forced upon the organisation.

‘MABS is a great initiative which was started by Brendan Roche and the Loche Credit Union twenty give years ago,’ he says, of the organisation which provides budgeting advice to people who are experiencing financial difficulties.

The restructuring process has been ongoing for a number of years, and resulting in MABS relocating to premises in Anne Street. He says that while they have been told that offices won’t close, MABS employees are apprehensive that the restructuring could impact on their jobs.

‘We have three staff in the Dundalk office while the Board of Directors are all voluntary,’ he explains. ‘ There is also a MABS office in Drogheda.’

He says that the volunteer Board of Directors bring a wealth of local knowledge to the service which will be lost when the boards are replaced on a regional basis.

‘It’s proposed to do away with the 51 voluntary companies and replace them with eight regional companies,’ he continues. ‘We would be going into a regional committee with the midlands, West Meath, Longford and Kildare, while we would be better off alongside Monaghan and Fingal.’

He argues that be any savings from the new measures, as the current Boards of Directors act in a voluntary capacity.

‘ They have offered us the opportunity to become an ‘advisory committee’ but we won’t have any clout,’ he says.

MABS Boards around the country are concerned at the moves, which saw KPMG auditors appointed earlier this year.

They have lobbied politicians around the country to halt the restructuring so that the views of BABS and CIS staff and volunteers can be heard.

Earlier this year, a Fianna Fail motion calling for a halt to the process and for a cost benefit analysis into the proposed changes, resulted in a defeat for the Government when it lost by 90 votes to 51.

Sinn Fein TD John Brady has now written to Dundalk MABS informing them that he along with party colleague has produced a Bill which he hopes to introduce to the Dail this week, and which, if passed, will remove MABS from under the remit of the Citizens Information Board