The Northern Ireland Executive Programme to Tackle Paramilitary Activity, Criminality and Organised Crime recently launched its latest ‘Ending the Harm’ public awareness campaign, which will focus on how paramilitary gangs use illegal money lending as a means to control and exploit vulnerable people.
The campaign launches by telling the story of how a young single mother’s situation deteriorates rapidly once she borrows money from an illegal lender. The campaign will run across TV, radio and online, with outdoor advertising posters on sites across Northern Ireland.
This Executive Programme aims to stop harm, both in the here and now and over the longer term. Through the Programme we will cut off paramilitary supply chains, whether that’s paramilitary drugs that ruin people’s lives, money-lending that leads to misery or the violence that leaves vulnerable kids shot and maimed in the street. There should never be any place for this and as a society, it’s so important we support the people who every day stop another generation being scarred in this way.”
Justice Minister Naomi Long
Read more about Ending the Harm