The banking sector has supported calls for alternatives to prison for dealing with people who do not pay their debts and fines.
The call, from the Irish Banker's Federation, comes as the Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) publishes a report calling for an urgent overhaul of how the legal system deals with people in financial trouble.
The report, An End Based On Means?, says the legal system's treatment of people in debt has remained "largely unchanged in over 60 years". It says the legal process is a blunt instrument.
It also says that in the year 1997 to 1998 there were 30,000 undefended debt-related judgments in the courts.
"New solutions are needed to help the increasing number of people who find themselves unable to cope with their debts," the report's author, Mr Paul Joyce, writes.
Mr Joyce says the primary growing problem is that a person's ability to repay loans is not being taken into account early enough and that credit is being given out too easily.
"A person's ability to repay should be assessed at the earliest possible stage on the basis of an agreed financial statement and on the totality of their debts. There is little to be gained in allowing a person of limited means to be pursued though the courts by a variety of creditors."
The costs of such "pointless exercises" are not just short term, in court time, legal costs, garda time and prison stays, he warns. There are arguably longer-term social costs, "in terms of healthcare and crime".
Supporting FLAC, the IBF said it had been seeking alternative means of addressing indebtedness with the Department of Justice since 1997. It called for the introduction of a system whereby repayments could be deducted at the source of a person's income.
