The Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS) is the State’s money advice service. We provide free, confidential and independent support for people struggling with problem debt. We work with people in debt or who are struggling with money management, assess each client’s situation as a whole and find the best solution for that client.
MABS uses social media platforms to promote MABS and reach people who need our services. We use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp (086 035 3141) and YouTube to keep you informed of developments in money advice and budgeting.
Abhaile
Abhaile, launched in 2016, is a scheme to help homeowners find a resolution to home mortgage arrears and keep them, wherever possible, in their homes. It provides vouchers (through MABS) for free financial advice, legal advice, and insolvency advice and support from experts.
Abhaile uses social media platforms to create awareness of the Abhaile scheme and reach people struggling with their mortgage repayments or who are in long-term arrears to share useful information and let them know that help is available.
Abhaile shares information using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to keep you informed of developments in mortgage arrears and the supports available.
What to expect
If you follow us on social media, you can expect tweets and posts covering some or all of the following:
- News and developments in financial services and supports that might have an effect on our audience
- Advice on taking control of your money, spending, and budgeting
- Advice on tackling debt including, but not limited to credit card debt, rent arrears, mortgage arrears, loan arrears and utility arrears
- Educational content to help you improve your relationship with money
- Details of new and updated information on mabs.ie
- News on development and enhancement of the MABS service
- Job adverts for positions at MABS companies
- Retweets and shared posts from other users that we think will interest our followers, particularly those from our services and other Government bodies.
Our social media sites are managed by authorised staff of the Citizens Information Board in the MABS/Abhaile Communications team.
The team monitors all MABS and Abhaile social media profiles during regular business hours from Monday to Friday, from 9am to 5pm.
Who we follow
We follow relevant accounts and pages, especially those belonging to other Government bodies. If you follow us, we will not automatically follow you back. Sometimes we’ll follow you so that we can exchange direct messages.
We share, or retweet information that we think will interest our followers. Failure to engage with comments is not a refusal to comment on a particular issue. Retweets, likes, shares, and follows do not imply endorsement of any kind by MABS or Abhaile.
The MABS/Abhaile Communications team will not engage with any commentary that is deemed inappropriate, defamatory, offensive, abusive, threatening or libellous. The MABS/Abhaile Communications team reserves the right to block users without prior notice and may report such commentary to the relevant social media platform.
To protect your privacy, you should not publicly post comments that include your personal or private information such as PPS numbers, telephone numbers or email addresses.
The commentary, imagery and materials posted by users to the MABS/Abhaile social media accounts do not reflect the ideas and opinions of MABS or the Abhaile scheme. MABS and Abhaile accept no responsibility for such content.
We welcome all comments and constructive feedback about MABS and the Abhaile scheme.
Privacy
Our social media accounts are hosted by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, WhatsApp and Messenger. You can find their privacy policies online at these links:
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/policy.php
Instagram – https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
Twitter – https://twitter.com/en/privacy
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy
YouTube – https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en
WhatsApp – https://www.whatsapp.com/privacy
We use a social media monitoring platform called Agorapulse. You can find the Agorapulse privacy policy at https://www.agorapulse.com/privacy-policy/
Respect other users
- Discriminatory, obscene, offensive, abusive, bullying, defamatory or harmful language about people or organisations
- Anything that negatively targets people or groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender or any other protected status under Ireland’s equality legislation
- Political commentary or debate
- Factually incorrect, fraudulent, deceptive or misleading information
- Private or personally identifiable information such as names, email addresses, addresses, phone numbers, and PPS numbers including information about our employees
- Anything that infringes on another person’s intellectual property rights or copyright
- Unrelated information or links
- Commercial promotions or spam
We aim to moderate the content featured on our social media accounts in a timely manner, however this may not always be possible. You can contact us to report content that you believe breaks these rules. You can also report it directly to the social media platform.
Stay on topic
We understand that occasionally you may need to get something off your chest, and we respect that. We welcome your feedback and encourage you to join any healthy debate that takes place on our social media sites. However, to give everyone the chance to have his or her say, we’d ask that you only post a message/tweet once. We may remove repetitive posts/tweets to leave space for others to join in.
Contacting us
When you contact us, we will try to respond to you as quickly as possible. If your question is technical in nature, it may be easier to request a call back from the MABS Helpline. You can do so by requesting a day and time between Monday to Friday, 9am to 8pm. You can also email helpline@mabs.ie.
Online chat – What to expect
MABS advisers are available to chat through WhatsApp on 086 035 3141.
The WhatsApp chat is managed and monitored by the MABS/Abhaile Communications Team in CIB and MABS staff from each of the 8 regional companies respond to the queries. Our team will make sure to respond to your query as quickly as we can during the hours of 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. However, some questions may take longer to resolve, as we may need to contact other areas within MABS or Abhaile services.
All posts outside of our working hours will be addressed as soon as we’re back online the following working day. For urgent queries, please call the MABS helpline 0818 07 2000 between 9am to 8pm Monday – Friday.
Some queries may be straightforward, like ‘how can I make an appointment?’, ‘Where can I go to get support?’, or ‘Where is my local mortgage arrears adviser located?’ Other queries relating to your specific situation might be more detailed, and we might require some more information to direct you to the correct service. On such occasions and to protect your privacy, we will ask you to share personal information with us so that we can work to resolve your query. This might be your name, contact number and location so that we can organise for a local service to call you. We will only ask for enough information to advance your query and will seek your consent.
Our online chat facility is managed using SaySimple/Eazy Instant Messaging.
You can find SaySimple’s privacy policy at https://www.eazy.im/privacy.
Updated: August 2021
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