The St Vincent de Paul Society has warned that credit card customers who pay the minimum on their bills end up paying outrageously high interest rates.
The charity also criticised the prominence given on credit card bills to the minimum payment credit customers must make.
The Minister for Social and Family Affairs responded that legislation maybe necessary if he can find a suitable way to curb finance houses charging what appeared to be outrageously high rates to vulnerable people.
He has instructed his departmental officials drawing up new legislation to get legal advice on how to curb or even ban these rates.
But Séamus Brennan said that credit cards were financial products which people did not have to take and that he was not setting out to reform them.
He told reporters in Dublin that he was quite alarmed at the level of debt among more than 10,000 people who approached the State's confidential Money Advice and Budgeting Service this year.
Official figures show they were mostly 26- to 40-year-olds; one quarter were single while a further quarter were single with children.
On average they owed almost €6,400 and paid legal interest averaging over 20 % and as high as 39 % in many cases
A spokesman for the Irish Bankers' Federation said his members are not at all convinced that the billing methods employed by credit card companies are contributing to people's debt problems.
However, he told RTÉ News the banks were prepared to examine any evidence supporting the St Vincent de Paul's case if it was presented to them by MABS, with which he said the IBF has a very strong relationship.
