Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Gerard McConville, Dundrum Credit Union, Mr. Philip Hosford, Gurranabraher Credit Union and Mr. Pat Owens, St. Mary's Parish Credit Union, all of which made submissions to the joint committee on this exercise. I want to remind everyone that as this meeting is being broadcast by UPC on its channel 801 they should ensure their mobile phones are switched off as they have a tendency to interfere with the signal, thus disrupting the transmission.

I wish to advise the witnesses that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, they are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to this committee. However, if they are directed by it to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and they continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. Witnesses are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against a person, persons or an entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. Members similarly are advised and reminded of the long-standing ruling of the Chair to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

As we are under some time pressures in this exercise, in terms of the requirement on the Minister to publish the relevant legislation by the end of September, we will move directly to engagement with members. This is an important exercise on which the joint committee has received a considerable number of submissions, which have been published. The transcript of the joint committee's meetings will be sent to the Minister. The committee will also attempt to put together a list of the main issues arising out of these hearings.

While it is clear from the submission received from Mr. Philip Hosford that Gurranabraher Credit Union supports the findings of the commission and believes that as far as possible they should be implemented he has, nevertheless, raised a number of points, largely on prudential requirements, governance, stabilisation and restructure, which it is fair to say are the issues of most concern to people commenting on the heads of the Bill. On prudential requirements, Mr. Hosford has drawn our attention to heads 2, 6, 7, 10 and 16. I will ask him to deal specifically with those points first, although Members may have more over-arching questions which they wish to ask of him. We will have an opportunity for that debate later.

The point is made in Mr. Hosford's submission that head 2, which relates to reserves, is not sufficiently clear in the Bill. Perhaps he would elaborate briefly on that point.