Mr. Jimmy Johnson:

Deputy Spring's points are very well made and I concur with them. They really reinforce the need for a memorandum of understanding between the representative organisations - credit unions and the Central Bank. We believe that is critical going forward. Deputy Spring made a point about volunteerism, which is the distinction between credit unions and other financial institutions or people providing financial services. Volunteerism is the edge we have. Credit unions started off with just volunteers and no resources and, as Deputy Spring noted, have become very successful and admired throughout the world and Ireland for what they have done and what they continue to do. Volunteerism is still the edge. It comes back to the point made by Deputy Pearse Doherty. Our concern about the prohibitions in the legislation is that anything that works against volunteerism will work against the credit union movement developing in the future. At a time when the country needs to promote active citizenship and volunteerism, legislation should actively promote volunteerism. It is not to take from the points Deputy Humphreys made about the need to regenerate boards to bring on new people and get new ideas. That is a separate principle but allied to the principle of volunteerism and we believe the legislation should promote volunteerism and best practice in terms of governance. It is critical for the credit union movement that we have volunteerism going forward.

In terms of the vision, Mr. Brennan laid out in the last few points what we see as missing from the draft legislation. It relates to key issues and the vision we have for the credit union movement, a vision members of the Irish League of Credit Unions have bought into. We need the huge change menu within the draft legislation and we buy into it but we must do so in a way that gets us to some place where we can provide better services to our members.

Our mission is to ensure the change process in which we are actively engaged and working on will facilitate the delivery of a full range of personal financial services to our members in the near future. We hope to see the creation of the required flexibility for various forms of co-operation among credit unions; that we will have the enablement and encouragement of various forms of co-operation; the preservation of the movement's social, volunteer and community ethos; the preservation of local identity and autonomy while enabling credit unions to be a part of greater movement co-operative alliances; and the facilitation of the creation of movement-owned infrastructure in information technology in payments and other appropriate areas which are required to achieve the above. That is what we want the legislation to enable for the credit union movement, not just the legislative and regulatory requirements that are seen as necessary and the improvements in governance, which we accept, as well as those in training and education.

In respect of volunteerism, there will be a big step up in terms of the skills required to be on boards of credit unions in the future. We want to be able to attract ordinary, normal people who are members of credit unions to be volunteers in and directors of their credit unions. We want to be able to give them the training, education and skills. They will bring their own life skills, which is critical going forward. If there are prohibitions on volunteers and time limits, there will be massive investments in people that will not come to the desired fruition. We need to see volunteerism promoted and people encouraged to participate and be involved in their own community so that we have a credit union movement that is of and for the people.