A report has revealed that 276 people in Ireland were sent to prison last year for not paying their debt.

According to Free Legal Advice Centre the figures bring to light a need for urgent reform of what it described as Ireland’s Dickensian laws on debt enforcement.

The group added that the process of debt collection in Ireland appears almost designed to exclude debtors from playing a role and from understanding what is involved.

Its call for reform of the process also enjoys the backing of the Irish Banking Federation, which has argued that the current policy provokes needless distress and wastes resources.

In an unrelated development it has been revealed that some of the UK’s most aggressive debt collection agencies are owned by private equity giants.

An investigation by a newspaper published over the weekend claimed that four of the most significant operators in the country’s debt recovery industry are private-equity-owned and that a fifth is partly owned by a hedge fund and two banks, including HBOS.