Irish loan funds
type of fund for poor
The Irish loan funds were microcredit organizations that operated in Ireland between 1720 and 1915.
They were run by local associations that made small loans to the industrious poor, and were often very successful.
At peak there were about 300 loan funds.
Some of the funds were set up in the 18th century, and many more in the 19th century after regulatory legislation was passed in the wake of the 1822 Irish Famine.
The regulations became more restrictive in 1843, perhaps due to pressure from the banks.
Over half the loan funds closed due to the new rules combined with the economic disaster of the Great Famine (1845–1849).
The remaining loan funds faced growing competition from other sources of credit and the shrinking rural population, but some survived into the 20th century.
Most of the records from the loan funds supervised by the London-based Irish Reproductive Loan Fund Institution before the famine have been preserved and are of great value to people researching their ancestry.
History
Early years (1720–1822)
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) may be credited with starting the loan fund system when he created a small fund with £500 of capital for use by poor but creditworthy people who had projects that promised high return on investment but who lacked collateral.
The small loans were made to "poor industrious tradesmen" for reproductive purposes: the seed money would multiply.
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This entry incorporates text from “Irish loan funds” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.